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<pre>Australian and New Zealand grower may have seen the June 1999 issue of "The
Australian Olive Grower". On page 18 is an article called "Artic Express"
by Andrew Burgess it states:-

"For example if a variety grown in Tuscany is listed as "not cold
tolerant" this could simple mean that it cannot handle the regular Tuscan
frost as low as -20°C. In a 'cold' Australian grove which regularly goes
down to -8°C it may do fine."( end of quote.)

We live across the border in Umbria which is on average colder than
Tuscany and I can assure you we do not have a regular frost of -20°C. In
fact the last one we had was in 1985 and before that in 1963 or 1964. On
both occasions the frost created havoc in the olive groves of central Italy
with an enormous amount of destruction.

In 1996 we had a frost of -8° C for some hours during a period of
two days when the temperature was always below freezing. This frost did
serious damge to many varieties. Many of our trees are old and it is not
easy to identify the varieties. The Leccino and similar types were only
slightly affected but other trees lost all their leaves and the wood up to
two years old was killed. The crop has been reduced for a couple of years.
For young trees only two years old, we lost nearly a third of about 50
Frantoio we had planted the previous spring. Another third of them were
frosted off to ground level but they shot again from below ground. Most of
them have grown so slowly that we have pulled them out and replanted. Even
the better ones are only now back to where they were when we planted them.
All in all the 1996 frost cost us 40 to 50% of our young trees. I think
that the temperature of - 8°C must have been very close to the limit for
Frantoio because the damage was so erratic. One or two trees in the row
have been killed followed by some without damage and then more that have
been killed or damaged.

Of course the above refers to winter frost. Olives are more
suseptible to frost in spring but we have had only one bad spring frost in
the last ten years. Usually we have enough cloud cover and humidity to
protect us.

Cheers Brian Chatterton.
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