PACKAGING

How to best preserve Extra Virgin Olive Oil

LEARN OIL WITH LEO
Lesson n. 3
"THE CULTIVATION"
Planting an olive tree is a very simple operation in itself: you make a hole in the ground, insert the tree, cover the hole with earth, go back to the bar to brag to your friends.
If you think about it, there are a lot of things just as simple.
To make wine, just take some grapes, squeeze them, put them to rest for 25 days and then bottle them. Done.
To make love, just insert a penis into an orifice of your choice or rub a vagina with whatever suits you best. Done.
To make a pizza, just mix the water and flour, add tomato and mozzarella, bake. Done
NOTE: this is a very complex topic, therefore the attempt to report information, involves incidental incompleteness and superficiality.
Even growing an olive tree requires a series of precautions. First of all WHERE and WHEN to plant. Not all areas of the world are ideal. The olive tree is a plant that was born in the Mediterranean, probably in Greece or Turkey. It needs temperate climates, with not excessively cold and humid winters and hot and dry summers.
In fact, the climate changes of recent years have brought with them various problems. The hot and humid summers favor the proliferation of parasites and fungi (diptera, aphids, lice or Xylella, just to mention the most famous), the mild winters provide destabilizing information to the plant, with early blooms consequences, the late frosts of early spring then, they burn the shoots and compromise the entire harvest, if not the very existence of the plant.
The olive tree is however a very resistant plant, therefore over the centuries it has adapted to different situations. There are different cultivars, or plant species, each of which provides a different type of olive, with different characteristics regarding size, percentage of water, ripening times, dimensions, etc.
The olive trees are usually planted one year after their germination, which took place in the nursery. The seedlings are placed in the ground preferably in late winter, and become productive after about 3 years.
During the year the soil must always be kept clean. In this regard, the cultivation schools are essentially 2. The first indicates tilling the soil at least a couple of times a year to free it from weeds, while the second involves cutting the grass that is found in the olive groves, in order to guarantee a greater retention of water in the soil, limit the rise in temperatures and contribute to the enrichment of the soil. These two different ways of caring for the soil also affect harvesting, since a bare soil offers different effects than a grassy one.
Obviously, fertilization systems must also be used, to ensure that the plant has the nourishment necessary to grow healthy and robust, therefore able to deal with adverse weather conditions and parasites.
Conventional crops add nitrogen fertilizers, in order to enrich the soil with this fundamental nourishment necessary for trees to grow well. Obviously these fertilizers are obtained in the laboratory by chemical synthesis, and therefore are prohibited in organic cultivation. It is therefore necessary to resort to different types of fertilizers that still guarantee a fair supply of nitrogen, but without resorting to unhealthy practices. To enrich the soil, it is therefore possible to sow legumes (which release nitrogen into the soil) under the plants, or add fertilizers obtained from the recycling of organic waste, manure or waste from other crops.
To protect the plant from parasites, conventional methods involve the massive use of herbicides and pesticides, which guarantee the plant to grow and thrive, but which obviously end up in the fruits and the final product. Gnamm!
The methods used in organic farming provide for the limitation of permitted substances, preferring alternative methods such as insect traps, cooperating plants and targeted pruning.
That of olive tree pruning is a real and very complicated science, which requires a dedicated lesson. The functions of pruning are many: to guarantee the best growth of the plant, the distribution of its fruits, fight the plagues, make the plant fascinating for photographic services, etc.
As in the aforementioned examples, the practices and precautions to be adopted are many and the coordination expertise of the various processes can guarantee a satisfactory result for those who practice cultivation and especially for those who benefit from the good work performed.
PS Not having videos of olive trees being grown, get 12 seconds of olives!