Today I planted an Arbequina olive tree that Miller spotted while we were at the Pukalani stables farmers market. It’s a relatively small Spanish olive commonly grown in California and is self pollinating BUT it needs 300 consecutive chill hours below 7C (45F) to produce fruits. Here in Laupahoehoe our average low temperatures in January is around 16C (61F). But I tend to Google research these things a little too late………..
The olive tree reminded me of my first real road trip 10 years ago when Julia and I drove the little Opel hatchback from Germany to the toe part of Italy. We stayed at our friend Rocco’s summer home in a town called Cittanova and hung out at his family’s olive orchard with trees that were well over a hundred years old. Rocco had a huge vat of olive oil in his pantry and every restaurant had a bottle of olive oil on the table just like how we would have ketchup, soy sauce, or sriracha here.
The highlight of our trip was when we visited a tree nursery and we were spontaneously invited to have lunch with the nursery owner’s family because it was lunch time. We made a lot of great memories driving 1600 miles and actually… we did this road trip twice. Im reposting some of my favorite pictures from our Italy adventures.
Originally posted on 2021-07-19, part of the daily planting journal behind Ha’a Chocolate’s food forest on Hawai’i Island.