Olive flowers spring 2008

In the one week we were at Montevettolini the olive trees burst into bloom. It's pretty late this year following a rather cold and wet March but as soon as the sun came out the trees responded. Soon everything will be covered with a fine layer of pale yellow pollen as the flowers open. We're hoping for better harvest this year as last year a lot of Tuscan olive trees were attacked by fly larvae (maggots is such a nasty word) which hatch in the immature olives and eat the flesh of the olive causing the olives to fall early, or extremely low grade oil if you bother to mill the olives. We're trying to avoid spraying the olives with chemicals and one recommended organic control is to hang a mixture of fermenting fruit in plastic water bottles from the trees. The flies are attracted to the fruit and fly into the bottles, get drunk and forget about depositing their eggs in the olives. We'll let you know how it goes!