A Practical Treatise on Olive Culture, Oil Making and Olive Pickling/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
COSTOFAPLANTATION.
It should not be understood by the numerous quotations given in preceding chapters that the cultivation of the olive tree is impossible or will give but meagre results in a rich soil, well cultivated and abundantly manured. Such a soil, well selected, and provided it is properly drained, will give a good yield, which will be, as in all other cultures, the direct result of the good care that will be given to the tree. We should, however, bear in mind that it has been said time and time over by the best authorities on the subject, and especially by Michaux, that the quality of the fruit of the olive is essentially affected by that of the soil, and that while it succeeds in good loam capable of bearing wheat and vines, in fat lands it yields oil of an inferior flavor and becomes laden with a barren exuberance of leaves and branches.
Moreover, those rich valley lands are not always within the means of all parties who desire to avail themselves of the numerous advantages that the culture of the olive tree presents. Those with but modest means at their disposal will rather invest in fifty to one hundred acres of hill lands, more or less rocky, if their outlay for the same will not be above that required for the purchase of from ten to twenty acres only of a richer soil, especially if it is fully demonstrated to them that the olive tree will grow well on those steep and stony lands, and that while they are not likely to lose anything in quantity, relatively to a richer soil, they will gain the advantage of a finer quality in the product.
Let us thus study the cost of a plantation and its proper care on rocky lands, the price of which may vary from $10 to $30 per acre, according to their nearness to or remoteness from a city, or facilities of transportation. I will take in this as a basis, my own plantation of about 6,000 olive trees, which I made in 1884 on hill lands, most of them inaccessible to the plow, and where I have had all the work done by hand.
Planting as much as possible at a distance of twenty feet—for on such places regular lines could not be made—we have about one hundred trees per acre, leaving out the very few patches where it is utterly impossible to plant even an olive tree. We will select for this plantation, one year old rooted cuttings, coming directly, or originally, from trees that have been grafted, of which the stem will be hardly from ten to twelve inches high, and the roots from three to six inches long.
For such small trees it will be sufficient to dig the ground one foot deep, or one foot and a half when the soil permits, but where the hole cannot be dug as deep as that, some of the surrounding earth can be brought around the tree in a concave shape.
The digging of these 100 holes, and the planting of the tree, should not cost above $5 per acre. Two hoeings of a space about three feet wide, around each tree, one in early spring, one in early summer, at $1.50 each, will make it $8 altogether per acre. The small rooted cuttings can be had at prices ranging from $10 to $15 per hundred, according to sizes; and taking their maximum cost of $15, we come to a total of $23 per acre for all the first year's expenses, independently of the cost of the land, which can be bought as cheap as $10 per acre, and even cheaper, if the purchaser is not particular about being near a city or a railroad.
During the following years, three hoeings, distanced according to a more or less rainy season, will be more than is required to keep the plantation in very good condition; it will not cost altogether over $5 per acre, to which can be added the cost of pruning every two years, and, if desired, the cost of manuring every two or three years.
When comparing this simple and cheap work with the care required by a vineyard, which, besides the regular cultivation, pruning, plowing, cross plowing, hoeing, tying, needs expensive stakes, suckering, summer pruning, sulphuring, etc., one can readily perceive the advantages to be found in olive culture.