La green pruning it is an operation that is carried out on the olive trees during the summertime, it integrates the winter pruning, completing it; usually performed in month of August, but could continue to first ten days of September. Like winter pruning, green pruning helps to direct the vegetative development on the organs that make up the productive structure of the plant.
The removal is a quick operation, mainly eliminates:
- the suckers, are branches that tend to be found in the area between the stem and the roots;
- the suckers, are dorsal branches, which have developed during the year on the branches and branches and on the upper part of the crown, eliminating the most vigorous ones, unless one of these serves to form or replace an old branch, in which case they should be left the more lateral ones.
Suckers and suckers are unproductive, they must be removed because they subtract nutrients from the plant, they have a very fast growth, even 2-3 meters a year. Suckers and suckers they develop after late winter or spring pruning, above all if important cuts are made, which create imbalances in the plant, which, to overcome them, emits new vegetation from adventitious buds, with the ability to grow quickly.
Please wait pruning the following year would mean leaving these branches free to grow and absorb energies to the detriment of other functions, starting from the development of the olives; removing them early would thus avoid a waste of nutrients.
The suckers, being born and developing inside of the foliage, they close portions left empty by the pruner for let the light penetrate inside the foliage. In this way, increased the density of the leaves, they are created shadows that depress productivity and possible stagnation of humidity which would favor the development of fungal parasites, such as peacock eye.
In cutting suckers need to be careful not to be confused with other similar twigs, which develop on the back of branches and branches, they are smaller and less vigorous, sometimes they almost form a tuft, they are called gimlets or males.
these gimlets should be left because they guarantee the normal flow of lymph, considering that the olive tree is "sectoral", that is to say that there is a correspondence between branches and parts of the root system, formed by a set of vascular bundles which directly connect the two apparatuses and if one deteriorates, consequently, the other weakens as well.
When you run the cuts of the suckers it is good not run them at the base or satin, ma to leave a protrusion of 1 -2 cm; while egre suckers, if possible, it is better tear them off by hand.
The pruning can also serve to eliminate some branches damaged or broken by atmospheric events or affected by some disease, however, we always operate on small branches and not on main branches or large parts of the plant. The green pruning operations absorb about 8% of the working time for the cultivation of the olive grove and this affects production costs. It should be kept in mind, however, that the cutting work decreases in the spring operations of the following year.
Green pruning is a ba system when reform cuts and restoration of olive groves have to be implemented old or abandoned, as it can be a good start from which to lighten the foliage and prepare them for the real intervention which will then be done in late winter or early spring.
Le summer pruning rules they are those of late winter or spring pruning, where it is good avoid forceful interventions, always using disinfected scissors when passing from one plant to another. The tool blades cutting edges must be well sharpened, making cuts downwards and outwards, which are clean and decisive.
AIPO Director
Interregional Association
Olive producers
