The Olive Fly Debacle

This spring I was tremendously excited to see a bounty of beautiful olives flowering and fruiting on our 2 Manzanilla olive trees.  Since planting the trees 4 years ago, this is the first year that enough fruit has actually formed on the trees to contemplate curing and eating them.  All summer I have been watching the olives grow, researching when to pick, and thinking about how I want to cure them.

Finally, last weekend, with many of the olives turning black I decided it was time to pick.  I checked some sources on the web and consulted my Sunset Edibles book and learned that if you squeeze the olive and a creamy white liquid comes out, indeed the olives are ripe and it's time to pick.  So excited, I grabbed a stock pot  and began envisioning Christmas gifts of beautiful jars of olives.  As I began picking, I noticed that many of the olives were shriveled and had brown spots (see photo below).  But, not to be deterred (maybe those were just over-ripe?), I harvested about 3 lbs of olives.

Ok, time to figure out what to do with them.  Again, consulting several websites, I decided to water soak them and then brine.  I diligently followed the instructions to sort, selecting olives that are roughly the same size; then gently crack them with a mallet being careful not to bruise the pit; then place them in a jar of water.  As I started the cracking process, I noticed tiny white worms crawling out of the bowl of cracked olives and all over my kitchen counter - aaagghhh!!

Franticly going back to the computer for a search of "white worm in olive fruit" or anything along those lines, I finally turned up the culprit.  The white worms infesting my olives are Olive Fly Larvae.  This, I learned is a fruit pest, along the lines of the Mediterranean Fruit Fly, that is extremely destructive.  Here's a link to a good source for more scientific information about the pest:
http://www.oliveoilsource.com/page/olive-fly-control

And here's a photo of one of the larvae climbing out of a cracked olive from my tree - yuck!

Suffice to say, I learned that there is nothing you can do if your olives are infested with the Olive Fly larvae; 3 pounds of ripe olives in the trash. And just like that, my hopes of jars of beautiful olives for holiday gifts . . . dashed.

Here are some of the things I learned in my research about olives and the Olive Fly:

• Olives ripen in late October - early November (in the northern hemisphere).  When they are ripe, they are plump; if you squeeze them they will emit a creamy white liquid.
• Olives can be picked when they are green or wait and pick them once they turn black.  The fact that mine were nearly all black in September was an indication that the trees are not healthy.
• Signs of Olive Fly infestation include early ripening of the fruit, brown spots and shriveling; if you squeeze infested fruit there will be a small white worm like the one pictured above inside.
• I have researched ways to get rid of the Olive Fly, but have not discovered a cure as yet. Stay tuned for more information on cures, and if you have any ideas or knowledge, please share! I would love to be able to get rid of the worms and have beautiful, worm-free, edible olives next year!!

Out of Pure Frustration . . .

I am a self-confessed Foodie, excellent cook, and urbanite with a desire to live off my land (my less-than-one-acre in suburban Southern California, that is).  Hence I have embarked on numerous green thumb projects. Some with great successes and many with tremendous defeat.  Out of pure frustration, knowing that there are lots of urban gardeners like me to commiserate with, I decided to start this open discussion of my triumphs and tribulations as I try to truly eat local from my own backyard.