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<pre>AlFreedo

Further to Brian C's advice I have found myself in a similar position. I
have "stand alone" "Mission" variety copses in three different areas. Prior
to my radical pruning two years ago the trees produced lots of shot berry
fruit interspersed with good fruit but not a lot of it. Following said
pruning, without the introduction of other varietals, the trees produced in
abundance this year. Good juicy fruit producing a good juicy and viscous
oil.

The only other thing I did was introduce bees to the scene to help with
pollination. They were certainly busy as bees tend to be but I cannot
categorically state that they helped things. It's a bit hard to do a double
blind test in such situations.

I did the same thing at a mixed grove (introduced bees) and got some
excellent honey and the best crop to date (Wedderburn - 365 trees & 14
tonne) off 14 year old trees.

With respect to the pruning the trees I dealt with were 38 year old ones
planted mainly as windbreaks or borders. They were planted and then left
untended, unirrigated. They were multi-trunked, full of dead wood, too high
to readily harvest and had "wild" mature shoots threatening to take over the
whole tree. The trees were radically pruned to three or four major branches
(at ground level), the tops lopped at about 12' maximum, innards thinned
out, feral wild and a lot of the dead wood dispensed with. Some really
major feral/wild branches were taken out I can tell you - it proved to be
excellent turning wood so don't whack it on a bonfire.

We are also dealing with a plot of (unknown variety) trees that are about
120 years old. The whole middle row has to be removed and it has some
absolutely beautiful wood in it. The owner of the plot is still thinking
about same - a picture of them can be seen at
http://www.victorianolivegroves.com/who.htm

Of course you could take an even more radical course of action and set fire
to the grove. This was done (inadvertently) to the large Victorian grove at
Horsham in Victoria. It certainly got rid of the scale problem and the dead
wood.
From all accounts there is vigorous grow back (I saw the trees last year
sprouting energetically) with consequent fruiting bonanzas

Regards,
Peter Caird
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