We have just put up a new paper on Olives.
See:
http://texasplantandsoillab.com/PDFs/olives-nutritional-and-sampling-notes.pdfLast Saturday, we were part of the Olives 101 program at
Sandy Oaks Olive Orchard just South of San Antonio. This was an action-packed day starting with a breakfast of breads and muffins baked right there, followed by field demonstrations in the orchard. Then, was a presentation on irrigation, followed by lunch - again, prepared right there on the premises. After lunch, our Chief Analyst and Consultant gave a presentation on soil and tree nutrition and testing.
Sandy Oaks is quite a place. Hope you would have a look at their webcyte:
http://www.sandyoaks.com/Also presenting was
Dr. Nasir Malik of the USDA-ARS who has spent 9 years on olives in Texas research. He has an outstanding PowerPoint presentation. We had previously met Dr. Malik in his office and are quite impressed with his work. With the soon closure of the ARS center in Weslaco, all of his research has been shut down. One of the many tragedies caused by the closure of the Kika de la Garza Subtropical Research Center.
However, we hope to be able to soon share some of his research with others in the form of a new paper (or papers) to be available on our webcyte. By the way, did you know that Texas produces some of the finest Extra Virgin olive oil in the World? ...Just one of the many things Dr. Malik's research determined... Consistant with all of our papers, we expect this planned paper to be very practical and provide a very large range of information. We're quite excited about the prospect.
If you're interested in olives, we think that we'll be able to give you some really entertaining reading...
We've discovered that there is huge need for soil and plant nutritional information by growers of grapes and olives - both now important and expanding Texas crops that our local land-grant university said couldn't be grown here...!... So, as you may suppose, we're developing new information, tests and presentations for growers of these crops. Stay tuned.
