Kero El turco

I came to this topic to decide on a date on heavy pruning.
And the info about moon phases are usually very contradictory and confusing. So, according to this calendar, I can mow&prune the first half of april and then graft&prune the other half. So it looks like I can prune anytime. Which I am sure is wrong.

Great information. Thanks.

Abraham Palma wrote:

I was thinking that the planting pattern should depend on the specifics of the landscape and the type of trees instead of applying a set formulae.

I think you hit the nail. Usually we plant the olives on the tractor convenience, with the wind as a second thought. When the wind is so prevalent, we should do the opposite.
But alas, your olive trees are already planted, you aren't going to move them. What you can possibily do is to play with your olive trees height. Maybe a row of taller olive trees could protect shorter ones behind and still give some yield.

Another thing to try is to prune them for wind resistance. Our olive trees are usually formed with three low trunks, very sloped, that results in a very wide and short canopy. I think this shape stands the wind pretty well (and makes it easier to climb on your trees, yey). Your trees, on the contrary, have one single straight trunk, so your canopy is very high, precisely where the wind is stronger.

Now it's late for reshaping, but maybe you can prune them to force lower side branches, and remove the central trunk once you have productive side branches.
Here's a typical spanish olive tree:

The picture I posted is one of the older ones. Half of them are still younger (8-10 year olds). We can still shape them. I have talked with lots of villagers. Usually the idea is to make one trunk and then seperate into 3-4 main scaffolds. Nobody seems to be able to explain the reason though. What you are saying makes a lot of sense. I will do some more research and consider shaping the younger ones this way.

Abraham Palma wrote:An olive orchard should be able to protect itself. Maybe the planting pattern was wrong? 10 meters between trees seems right for 4-5 m tall trees. 1 to 2 meters of clear space between copices.

It does protect itself somewhat. And wind is good for olives. But also there is wind and than there is wind. You can see from the picture that grown trees are far from covering the area. That is because they bend towards the west and their east side remains empty. So it makes around 3-4 meters empty space between trees. Another thought is planting some dwarf olives in between.

I was thinking that the planting pattern should depend on the specifics of the landscape and the type of trees instead of applying a set formulae. After all, that's the whole idea of permaculture isn't it?

These are great for the design. Thanks. Now my only doubt is if the cypress trees would create a chemical complication with the olives.like acidity or something else.

Hello.
I have a 5 acre olive orchard in Turkey. The olives are very widely spaced. 7-8 meters between trees. And it is on a hill so it gets lots of strong wind. It makes it impossible to train the trees well. All the trees lean towards the west and cannot spread good and nice to spread and use all the sun. I was thinking of planting a couple of  wind barriers in the place. The go-to plant for wind barriers is densely planted Cypress trees. My question is, would these trees stress the olives in any way? Since the barriers would be north-south they are not gonna block the southern sun for any of the olives. Maybe they would shade the tree to their immediate vicinity just a bit. So I am willing to do that sacrifice to slow the wind down. Can you think of any downside to this? Or does anyone have any other windbreaking ideas?