We’ve got a gorgeous backyard at our home here in a small town in southern Arizona. A small stream runs along one edge of our property, lined with willows and other small riparian shrubs and trees, and a beautiful stand of mature olive trees provides shade on the other side. One downside of these olive trees is that every spring they produce an incredible number of very small and basically inedible olives which drop to the ground in short order. My husband and I used to spend weeks’ worth of evenings every year gathering and disposing of these unfortunately useless olives, lest they rot and make a mess in our yard. A few years ago, we looked into olive tree spraying, and have enjoyed our spring times much more ever since.
It turns out that it’s actually pretty easy to stop olive trees from producing their fruit. A tree-care technician shows up at our house sometime in January or February with only a sprayer and a ladder for equipment. He applies a growth retardant chemical called “OF 125″ in a process that takes perhaps twenty minutes per tree. This olive tree spraying kills any buds that have developed, so that they will not develop into flowers and later olive fruits, and also prevents the tree from developing new ones.
