Eating Olives
At Lamda Olive Grove 4 kalamata Olive trees provide sufficent large, black olives for domestic use. They are picked by hand in October and must then be processed in salted water for about two months before eating. There are several variations of processing.
Olive Oil
The main crop is produced by over 100 trees at Lamda and Delta where the quality is high.
10 at Trigono and 5 at the Lemon Grove provide a small crop of lower quality oil.
There are wild olive trees at both the Lemon Grove and Petra which are not harvested.
Yields vary according to the micro-climate of each site as well as overall conditions for the year and how the trees were pruned the previous year. Lamda, has rich but well drained soil, ideal conditions for high quality oil.
The trees have been pruned to provide a main crop on alternate years, making it easier to manage from a distance, though bad weather may still ruin a good crop.
Annual Olive Production
2009 121 litres, a low crop but of very high quality.
2008 507 litres, olive harvest was a high quality (oxidation level 0.3), moderate crop. a generally poor year for olives in the area so the crop was higher than expected.
2007 143.4 litres, the crop was harvested in mid November 2007 rather than early December.
2006 crop was lost because harvesting was left too late and the fruit was damaged by frost.
2002-05 crops were not officially harvested and trees were not pruned properly. A combination of bad weather conditions, use of organic fertilisers or no fertilising, and lack of funds to visit and check work.
2001 Crop was low - c 68 litres
2000 Crop was medium - c 265 litres
1999 Crop was heavy - over 400 litres.
lemon Production
If the olive harvest figures seem depressing then the lemon harvest has been catastrophic.
The 2000 crop was good, but had not been harvested before the grove was purchased and it was too late to take the crop to the local co-operative.
2001 a 15 ton crop, sold to the co-operative at Gialova. Costs of transport, let alone harvesting, exceeded income by by far.
2002 a small crop in late October, but trees had been pruned so main crop was low.
2003 - crop harvested by others - no value
2004 - 2008 no crop harvested due to tree damage and low economic return. "Visitors" take fruit. It is pragmatic to overlook this, since the trees suffer if fruit is not picked but left to grow heavy and rot.
2009 - about 200 lemon trees too damaged to bear good fruit. These were uprooted.
2010 - Work commissioned to clear round remaining approximately 100 trees and prune.
lessons learnt
One major factor contributing to the loss of crops is likely to have been the change from normal commercial fertiliser to organic fertiliser, which proved expensive and difficult to apply. In 2008 manure was applied but in 2009 we reverted to the commercial product. Not being present to observe and supervise type, time and amount of fertiliser used is a problem!Ohers have also found that organic methods produce such low yields in this region of the Peloponnese that it is not a viable option.