How olives are harvested: harvesting rules, storage and use

Table Of Contents

When harvesting
Required tools
How are olives harvested?
Crop storage
Use

Many people love to treat themselves to olives, but few people know how to properly harvest olives. The Greeks were the first to use the olive. The produced olive oil, they call "liquid gold". Gradually, the product spread to all countries of the world, it is actively used fresh, pickled and processed into oil.

When harvesting

Harvest from September to December, depending on growing area and variety. Olives begin to appear in the 4-5th year of the vegetative period. From 50-150 kg of harvest is removed from one tree, it lives for almost 600 years, and bears fruit for 50-150 years. It all depends on weather conditions and care.Olives and olives are the berries of the same tree. Just olives that are fully ripe, but green ones are not.

Green olive picking

The collection of green drupes is carried out in late September - early October. Remove them until the berries begin to darken. Leave part of the trees for the extraction of olives or remove them partially.

Picking black olives

Black ripe olives are harvested from late November to early December. Under good weather conditions, the collection is carried out in February. If the drupes have ripened to the end, then they weakly stick to the branches, it is much easier to knock them off the shoots than to collect them individually. As soon as the berries begin to fall off, and the black color has covered the entire olive, the harvest begins.

Required tools

To manually pick olives, the following tools are needed:

A box with a rope around the neck;
Stairs;
Goggles to protect from the sun and flying fruit.

To collect olives you need:

Canvas at least 12 m in diameter;
Special comb;
Ladder, for top fruits.

For machine collection:

Canvas 12 meters in diameter;
Machine with tapping mechanism or electric comb;
Protective goggles to protect against flying fruit.

How are olives harvested?

Green olives are harvested by hand and machine. With the manual method, workers harvest the crops in boxes of 25 kg. They climb trees, use ladders and try to collect as much as possible. Further, all the berries are placed in a conveyor, which sorts them by size, cleans them from foliage and debris.Damaged and beaten olives are recycled and oil is made from them. For 1 liter of this oil, 11 kg of fruits go.

The machine method is not welcomed by all farmers. Machine mechanism knocks on wood, drupes crumble. When falling, damaged fruits become larger.

Also used "combs" for branches connected to the motor. They get the job done in a short amount of time. Such work requires a lot of strength, so a woman cannot do it. They are combed out along with small twigs and leaves. Before work, a canvas is lined under a tree. After dropping the drupes to the ground, they are cleaned of twigs and leaves, then packaged in cloth bags.

The olives grow on the same tree as the green ones. They are just more mature. After harvesting the green crop, a 12-meter canvas is laid under the tree.Then the full ripening of the fruit is expected. Some of them crumble themselves, the rest are collected by hand. Those fruits that grow high are combed out with a special comb. After the olives are collected and moved to the sorting conveyor. There they are distributed by size, cleaned of debris and leaves.

Crop storage

The olive cannot be kept outdoors for long. The maximum period is 3 days. Storage baskets are lined with paper. Then they are transported and try to send them for processing as quickly as possible. If this is not possible, then the shelf life is extended, the crop is placed in the refrigerator. It keeps the fruits for 7 days.

Use

After the harvest, olives are sold to factories. There they are pickled and canned food is prepared, which is often used as an addition to a dish or an appetizer. Olive oil is squeezed out of damaged and bruised fruits.

In countries where olive trees are common and grow in every plot, it is customary to use this oil for all purposes: for frying, for salad dressing, for marinating meat.

Olives are rich in useful trace elements, improve bowel function, improve skin condition. Their collection is quite laborious, in many countries where production is widespread, manual collection is still resorted to. It is believed that this method is more reliable and causes less damage to olives.