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<pre>Hii friends

Costs of hand harvesting of olives makes it nonprofitable in
Israel the same as in Australia

Hand harvesting olives for various types of home pickling is
my only solution for a family size plantation

I find the Israeli clone (easily propagated by cuttings)
Barnea, a perfect cultivar (under my soil and climatical
conditions in central Israel) for a prolific, heavy bearer,
fruit producer in clusters that makes harvest easy. It is an
upright tree and row spacing is two meters by 4-5 meters
between the rows.

It produces from the third year a commercial crop.

I tried bending and trelising it. Finally I have decided to
top it every 2-3 years to a manageable height of 3 meters.
I do not do any further pruning.

I decided to let the older black olives to drop on shade
cloth nets and collect the fruits in winter, half dry them
in coarse salt and sell them (immersed in some soya oil)

The reasons people in Israel produce oil from their olives
are:
a.the olive fruit fly infestation,
b. mechnical harvesting is faster and cheaper but bruises
the fruits
c. sorting fruits for pickling according to size, colour,
hardiness, blemishes for pickling needs expertise

Thus, I think that the choice of an easy clone for harvest
should be considered as the no 1 question before planting

I will be happy to exchange ideas as I studied for my PhD in
Agric at the New England Univ, Armidale, NSW 22 years ago
and I know Australian agriculture quite well

Ariel Shai
Israel
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