My sister has 2 Olive tree's (gifts from an eccentric aunt) and they are about 6 ft tall + the pot. they are in the ft hills of the rockies and will need to come in for the winter (we will see very high winds down the ridge and temps of -10 or colder). The problem is the height, they will be too tall to get any light from the windows in my sisters home. can we top these trees this fall at about 2 feet or so from the soil (root ball) and encourage shorter bushier trees? They would make much better indoor trees at this height anyway. I know you can prune olives fairly aggressively, but will this be too much? oh the olives have been potted outside on the porch since spring. They are Picholine and Arbiquina olives. Thanks
Should be OK. Olives are often grown as bonsai. But don't expect to get any fruit if you keep them that small.
Thanks for your reply, At this point i am only worried about keeping them alive over the CO winter, as at their height they just won't work indoors. One other thing, i will be cutting off all the leaves and growth, i'm basically cutting the trunk in half (trunk is about 5ft of the 6ft tree, really long trunk before it branches). will this kill the tree or will it start branching from below the cut? the only tree I've ever trimmed this aggressively is a crepe myrtle and those you can't hardly kill.
Yes, you can coppice olive trees. See this google page. You can scroll up and down. You'll see some olives were cut to an inch of the ground.
perfect, i wish i would have found that website earlier, would have saved a post! i appreciate all the help.
Hi, Here in Portugal olives are a major crop, and old trees are often very brutally cut back leaving just a trunk or perhaps with some short stumps of branches. This is also done to old trees when non-productive groves are being grubbed out. The trees are severely cut back and lifted for replanting as garden feature trees. The trees produce a flush of new shoots just below the cut and often some shoots lower down. So you should be OK! Good Luck! Brian
By now you've probably moved the trees inside but I thought I'd add a word about olive trees in winter—you mention that the trees wouldn't get enough light inside at the their height. Light during winter isn't that important to olives once they go dormant. Of course keeping them inside might not encourage them to go dormant!
