News
2024 We have kept the courier costs down by bulk purchasing up to now, but we have used up all our pre purchased tickets.
Unfortunately we have had to increase the courier costs to reflect their increases.
2024 was another difficult year for growers throughout NZ. The winter was again insignificant due a lack of good winter chilling. The humidity was still too high - and this trend continued right throughout the year. Spring was warmer than last year and we had a better fruit set, but it was not going to be an exceptional fruit set. It was much better than previous year though. Summer was wetter than the traditional summer, but we did get long periods of dry, but not very hot days. Nothing even got close to the 30 deg that we had seen in previous good years. Mostly in the mid 20's.
The humidity was still high into the summer and the Autumn. We made the call to harvest 3 weeks early as the anthracnose disease was starting to develop towards the end of April.
Our table olives did not fare well with this weather either. Kalamata was too far gone when I came back for the second and main pick! Manzanillo didn't have a large crop this year, so was taken early.
2023 Year Growers comment
The 2022 winter was quite dry and warm. No significant frosts recorded. The spring was cold and dry, and very slow to get going - which would have had an impact on the flowering.
The summer and autumn were both disaster seasons for any grower, except those wanting to grow grass!!
It was very wet and humid - none of which are suitable for a successful olive harvest.
We had more rainfall in the summer than we had in the previous winter, with a total of 600 mm over the summer period, which is more than half of our annual rainfall and it never let up - going into the Autumn.
There was no heat in the summer days, but the constant rain and predominantly E winds kept the humidity up all summer with 67 -70 % minimum. The temperatures were mainly in the mid to low 20's.
From early April, the fruit started to deteriorate on the trees, which was still 3-4 weeks away from harvesting. Manual removal was accomplished prior to an early harvest. The worst affected were the Spanish, Greek and Nth Africa varieties. Kalamata was too far gone to attempt any harvesting for table olives.
With the poor quality fruit we had both Chemlali and Koroneiki free fatty acid testing above the maximum to quality as Extra Virgin Olive oil. The quantity was also very low for both varieties.
NOTE - The winter of 2023 is also turning into a warm wet winter and high humidity!! NO frosts of any merit to mention as yet (early August).