Several years ago a couple of us from Rancho Milagro in Livermore California joined a workshop about "Pruning your olive trees." We learned a few things:

• Pruning should happen in alternate years
• Since fruit appears on the new growth of the trees, don't prune all the new growth away
• And the results should be open and airy, so that a bird can fly through the tree

The adage in the title of this post reminds us that the goal of pruning is by removing limbs that cross over each other, we reduce the heat in the middle of the tree, allowing air (and that bird!) to pass through with ease.

From my records, it looks like we hadn't pruned since 2022, which is three years ago, so we are late. And the previous pruning had been done by the same crew we used for harvesting. They pruned for the convenience of the pickers, rather than emphasizing the health of the tree. And it is true that we have continued to get record amounts of olives (and oil) over the past several years, though we noticed that in 2024 there were many more small olives. Can we do better?

We also learned that keeping the tangle of branches close to the trunk can promote disease in the tree. And now we have experience of what happens if air can't easily pass through the center of the tree: Storms with big winds can cause a tree to blow over. And we have big winds coming up the canyon. So there's a second interpretation of the adage!

Three weeks ago we hired a different crew to prune. They followed the recommendation we had learned, and the trees look more like we expected. The prediction is that we may get slightly less fruit, but each olive should be larger, yielding more oil overall. Stay tuned. We'll follow up in November or December, when the 2025 harvest is in. 

Meanwhile, we're shopping for a wood-chipper heavy-duty enough to handle these branches.