Hi from spain....the olive is very strong ...you can chop all you need......but not overwater the plant. Its like a ficus....you can leave 2 leaves and the olive will grow a new branch(sorry for my poor english)
From the Netherlands, if you defoliate in spring, al dormant buds will pop, otherwise it will only extend or grow from the 2 buds after the pruning point. But don’t do this every year, only when its strong. Ive got this tip from “Growing Bonsai by Jelle” here on RU-vid, I tried it this year when I placed my olive trees outside and completely defoliated them. And they started growing fresh new leaves all over the tree. Got lots more ramification than previous years
As a fellow spaniard bonsai enthusiast I'm happy to see you having an olive tree. Here comes a couple advices, or what we usually do with olive tree bonsais. They like plain soils, not too acidic, so knowing your soil.mix, probably you should go shorter on the pine bark. Here we repot it closer to summer( around may). And another one which dosen't afect you 😂, olive trees hate wiring. I'm eager to see the progress on this one! Thanks for the video and take care!
Man the olive tree looks great! It wasn't in this video, but it I think it might be interesting to try and root the large cutting you took off as a raft style cutting. Certainly would take up some space in the plant room having to be planted horizontally...that or of course just cut off the branches of that main thick cutting to all plant close together in one smaller pot.
You should consider keeping it in the greenhouse over the winter. You usually keep your greenhouse just a bit above freezing right? As long as it doesn't get a really hard freeze, it would probably like it a lot more than the basement. Olive trees like having a LOT of light.
I have my mediterranean and all that can handle temperatures below 0 Celsius but not deep frost in a cold greenhouse. (Oranges, Lemons, Olives, Satsuki Azaleas and the chinese elms). Mine is heated to not drop below -2 which seems ok since years.
olive trees can support a bit of frost ;-) my parents have one since years on their balcony in nantes france and it stays outside all year long and we sometime have around -5 -7°C in the winter
When it comes to the dormand period of olive trees, it´s usually short. I have 50 olive trees in Sicily and november temperatures might still feel like late summer for a canadian. In march day temperatures often reach over 20°C again.
Picked up a lovely little Olive tree at my local nursery today!! Very excited, for both, the tree, and future Olive videos from the 🇨🇦 Bonsai master!! Thanks Nigel for the great video!!
I cannot wait for our first snow. Right now we are bouncing between 30s and 70s. That is a really nice Ollie Scott gifted you. I look forward to seeing what you create in the future!
The first picture of the old Olive trees was taken on the island of Egina, off the coast of Athens. Its an ancient olive tree grove and its a rare find. Almost no tourists and really stunningly beautifuly trees that are THOUSANDS of years old.
Definitely a cool species for Bonsai. I don't have one yet, but I'd surely like to have one myself. I hope everything went well and it's growing healthily even with the off-season repotting. In the reference photos, some of the older specimens even looked a bit like Baobap with those fat trunks. I wonder what your olive will turn into!
There is something about an olive bonsai that is very desirable! I think I might head out (very hot outside, so find some shade) and look at my own twiggy little olives. Still need to get up to the Murray to collect a bigger one, but one day . . . Collected trees have the roots flat cut with a chainsaw, so I expect your restrained root work will give the tree little trouble!
Nice Olive from Scott. A trunk and a half with a cool root system. Definitely take the cuttings and try to root them, especially the one with the big cut. Nice and thick. Top and bottom pruning will get this olive off to a great start.
Olives don‘t lose their leaves over winter. Here in the Mediterranean climate there is no real winter, hovering just around the freezing point for a short time. Remember, olives are no tropicals.
I love olives 🫒 tree i have 2 bonsai and one tree one of my bonsai tree is over 30 years old its lovely my native land is Sicily the olives tree over there are old and majestically beautiful ❤
I'm very happy to see the best pruning of olive tree. Now it looks small and beautiful bonsai. Thanks for sharing valuable ideas. I'm a bonsai learner from Sikkim, India
Hey Nigel, I live in north Italy and I have lot's of olive bonsai trees. Your one seems selvatic (it has small leaves), so it is very resistant. Where I live, temperature has recently went down to 4°C at night and in the coolest period it will go under 0°. An olive like that has just to be protected from ice (so when temperature
Always wanted you to have an Olive and Ginkgo Tree . You got the olive and now i wish you get the Ginkgo tree too . The last one which you lost to insect borers was an amzing tree . When are you getting a Ginkgo tree ??
wait, so you're not doing major root work on that olive? lol, that was way more than I was expecting!!! Please give us an update when you can to see the progress in the spring. I am not sure what to do with my olive this winter. I don't have a great place to store it in the temps that it prefers.
So nice to have friends, who add up to your collection 🧡 I'm about to move my olive indoors from the balcony, where it has been chilling (and maybe got a light frost), so the timing of this video is spot on 😊. There are some branches I'd like to cut off and seeing your Nigel-treatment I feel confident about removing them. Maube even cutting the branches back so there'll be no foliage (I might have read somewhere you can do it and the backbud easily ?) Thank you for the excellent video once again 💚💚💚 And thanks for the Spanish viewers with the advise they gave you!🧡
I'm curious about what temperature is needed to start the olive cuttings, because I keep my tender plants in an unheated garage over the winter where the temperature rarely goes below 45 F and would like to do some cuttings if it's possible.
Hi Nigel, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and your skills about bonsai here! I really appreciate your channel and in the last two-three years I rarely missed one episode. I personally took the third of the olive tree photos few years ago in Sicily and it was such a nice surprise to see mentioned it here! The olive tree in my photo is the famous “ Olive tree of the Temple of Juno” inside the “Valley of the Temples” and it's about 500 years old. I can't wait to see how your bonsai olive tree will develop in the coming years!
