Olive season kicking off

Lisadurne Hill Olives is beginning harvest in northern Victoria on Wednesday, with early signs in quality promising.

Lisadurne Hill Olives kicked off their harvest on Wednesday. Picture: Zoe Phillips

Olive season is kicking off in some parts of Victoria, with Tina and Russ Knight beginning harvest on their 27,000 olive trees today.

Tina and Russ, who run Lisadurne Hill Olives at Rushworth in northern Victoria, said while they’re not expecting a “bumper harvest” this season, the quality of their olives is promising.

“We would love to get 80,000 tonnes, which is smaller than we want, but (the crop) is sensitive, patchy and sparse. We’re hoping to get that but we won’t know until we start,” Tina said.

“We had our olives tested last week so see what the oil and water content was. It was showing a good percentage of oil and not a troubling amount of water which was good.”

Tina Knight in her olive grove on her farm near Rushworth. Picture: Zoe Phillips

With many olive farmers experiencing issues with olive lace bug this season, Tina said they were able to knock the problem on the head very quickly.

“We did have a bit of olive lace bug, and a bit of peacock spot … We found three small areas that actually had the bug, but we did a two spray regime to get rid of it, and it’s not a problem now,” she said.

“A lot of people have had olive lace bug problems this year … this year was the first time that we’d ever had it, but we knew what to look for.”

With their harvest expecting to take between two-to-three weeks, it has been the weather, not pests, that has posed the biggest challenge for Lisadurne.

“We had to irrigate a lot, because there were months where we didn’t have any rain. Fortunately, we have a water right, but it certainly affected people who don’t have access to water,” said Tina.

“There was one grower that we know of where the olives became dried and shrivelled because they don’t have irrigation water.”