Polk County News
10A Polk County Itemizer-Observer • July 19, 2017
Olives: Comparisons drawn to wine industry
Continued from Page 1A
“It took me a long time,
it took me a year of daily
monitoring,” he said. “In
that year, I identified
maybe a dozen potential
sites and then did a little
more due diligence in terms
of what soils, and looked at
well logs to determine what
kind of water might be in
the area.”
Oregon olives are drawing
comparisons to the early
wine industry in that Caceu
and the other growers are
taking a chance on the crop
growing well here. Caceu
said the upside of the gam-
ble makes it worth it.
“The crop is fairly easy to
grow and easy to get to the
value-added product,” he
said, referring to the oil
made from olives.
Olives take a fraction of
the investment to plant than
wine grapes and require lit-
tle maintenance by compar-
ison, Caceu said. Keeping
the trees productive gener-
ally consists of providing
enough water, adding occa-
sional nutrients and light
pruning, he said.
He said olives are easy for
established farms to incor-
porate, which is the case at
the biggest olive farm in
state,Oregon Olive Mill at
Red Ridge Farms, Also home
to Durant Vineyards, the
farm has 17 acres of olives
and runs a commercial olive
oil mill.
“This crop, and the value
of the product, they fit very
well within a small farm
concept,” Caceu said. “It
doesn’t necessarily need
large acres.”
While La Creole Orchards
isn’t to the point where it
can sell oil yet, Caceu is
working to get his oil into
the hands of chefs and is
taking his product on the
road for tastings at farmers
markets and food festivals.
—
Experience on the ground
Olive farmers have been
experimenting with varietals
on their own, using trial and
error, more or less. The win-
ters of 2011 and 2013 re-
vealed their missteps.
By the winter of 2011, La
Creole Orchards and several
other farms were growing
Spanish trees that didn’t
fare well.
Caceu lost all his trees
that winter. He and other
growers decided to look
harder at the types they
were planting.
“We said, ‘let’s go back to
the book and see what else.’
Maybe we didn’t look well
enough or we went on wish-
ful thinking. Let’s just do
more research,” Caceu said.
“So, we did more research.
The first orchard in Keizer,
Victory Estates, they had
planted 20 or 30 different
varietals. From their experi-
JOLENE GUZMAN/Itemizer-Observer
La Creole Orchards owner Bogdan Caceu, left, talks with Neil Bell with OSU Extension at the farm on Thursday.
ence, we knew that there
were some that were quite
resistant.”
Growers began talking
with farmers in Europe to
get a better idea of what
would work. Caceu replant-
ed in 2013, with French and
northern Italian olive trees.
Those varietals have
worked well, Caceu said.
JOLENE GUZMAN/Itemizer-Observer
Olive trees of different ages are planted on 5.5 acres at La Creole Orchards.
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The trees made it through
2013 — another year the
state’s orchards suffered
losses — and this past win-
ter with minimal damage.
Now he’s putting hope in
science to find a made-for-
Oregon olive tree and estab-
lish better growing prac-
tices.
—
Turning to plant science
A few members of the
OSU research team visited
La Creole Orchards last
week to film the orchard
with a drone and take pho-
tos of the trees as part of the
olive project.
Neil Bell, Extension’s
community horticulturalist
for Polk and Marion coun-
ties, said the research goals
are to find a cold-hardy
olive tree variety, begin
propagation in Oregon,
and develop better cultiva-
tion procedures. Bell’s ex-
pertise is in finding cold-
hardy plants.
“We’ve done cold-hardi-
ness on woody ornamental
plants. This is the first fruit-
ing plant,” Bell said. “It’s a
woody plant. The same
principles that you would
apply to an ornamental
plant will work with a plant
like olives.”
OSU ordered olive tree
cuttings of more than 30
cultivars from the University
of California Davis, where
there’s a library of about 100
different varietals.
“Those will be planted in
Corvallis,” Bell said. “That
will form the beginning of
the cold-hardiness evalua-
tion.”
He said many more culti-
vars exist in Europe, provid-
ing more opportunities to
find what Oregon growers
seek.
“I guess no one could re-
ally tell you which ones are
hardier than others, other
than the ones that have
been trialed here,” Bell said.
“There’s good knowledge
just from growers experi-
menting with what would
work, but our goal is to find
something even hardier. If it
is out there. We literally
don’t know.”
At the same time as it
searches for hardier vari-
etals, the team will re-
search propagation tech-
niques.
“Right now, a lot of the
plants are bought out of
Solution on Page 6A
California, and they are not
cheap,” Bell said. “Allowing
better information on
propagation under local
conditions would be
good.”
Bell said early observa-
tions indicate the plants
gain hardiness with age, so it
could be beneficial to keep
the plants in pots for two to
three years before putting
them in the ground.
Caceu said last winter he
wrapped his trees to protect
them from the cold, which
worked with a few excep-
tions.
Extension’s researchers
may find types that don’t
require that kind of help.
If that happens, that
means comparisons to the
state’s wine pioneers could
hold true for Oregon’s olive
believers.
“I’ve heard the same
thing said that it’s 1965 for
the wine industry,” Bell said.
“Some did believe it would
work and there were pio-
neers that got it going. Bog-
dan is one of those pioneers.
He’s throwing a lot of time
and money into something
that is still very much in it’s
infancy.”