50 One Thousand Questions in Agriculture 



Old olive trees can be successfully moved a long distance by 

 cutting back, taking up a ball of earth, and possibly a short distance 

 v^ith bare roots if everything is favorable. But do not for a moment 

 think Ihcm worth such an outlay for labor, freight and hauling which 

 such a movement as you mention involves. The trees on arrival 

 would probably only be firewood, and if they lived, the time required 

 in getting a good growth and grafting, etc., would perhaps be as 

 great as in bringing a young tree of the right kind to bearing, and 

 the latter would be a better tree in every way. Large limbs can be 

 split and used as cuttings, but the tree would be growth on one side 

 and decay on the other. Use the smaller limbs for hard-wood cut- 

 tings and the balance for firewood. The smut shows that the trees 

 are covered with scale insects and might indicate that it is better 

 to burn up the whole outfit unless you learn to fight them. 



Darkening Pickled Olives. 



Is there anything that zvill make olives keep their black color when 

 put into lye? When I put my first picking of ripe olives in lye, a large 

 part of them turn green, the black leaving the fruit. My formula is one 

 pound of lye to Ave gallons of zvater. Have you any better formula? 



By exposing the olives to the light and air, either during the 

 salting or immediately after, ripe olives may be given a uniformly 

 black color. Also, fruit which is less ripe and which shows red and 

 green patches after processing with lye, becomes an almost uniform 

 dark brown color. To do this, the olives are removed from the 

 brine and exposed to light and air freely for one or two days. Your 

 lye was stronger than necessary. With ripe olives it is desirable to 

 use salt and lye together to prevent softening, and the common 

 prescription is two ounces of potash lye and four ounces of salt to 

 the gallon of water after the bitterness is largely removed by using 

 one or two treatments with two ounces of lye to the gallon without 

 the salt. It is necessary to draw off the solution, rinse well, and 

 put on fresh solution several times during the process to get the best 

 results. 



Seedling Olives Must Be Grafted. 



Will olive trees grown from the olive seed he the right thing to 

 plant? Will they he true to the parent tree or will they have to be 

 grafted? 



Olives which a seedling olive tree will bear will be, as a rule, 

 very inferior and generally of the type of the wild olive. All such 

 trees must be grafted in order to produce any particular variety 

 which you desire. 



Olives, Oranges and Peppers. 



We have been told that olive trees easily become infested with a 

 fungus disease which they then impart to the orange tree. The same 

 objection is raised to the planting of pepper trees. May this be true 

 in some parts of the State and not in others? 



