Mission olives (a dual purpose olive, good for both curing and oil) at Chaffin Orchards.

You can see it all now—it’s a sunny day and you’re sitting at a wooden table in your olive grove, eating olives and crusty bread, and drinking wine with your friends and family. You grew and cured those olives yourself.

The question is—WHICH olives?

Which olive trees will get prized positions in your olive grove?

It’s like growing any other edible—grow the flavors you like to eat.

You may already have favorite olives, or perhaps you’re from the school of All Olives Taste Great. If you have a chance, stop by your local deli or olive bar and do some sampling to point you in the right direction.

How to choose olive trees with our custom tools

Go to our Olive Trees page where we created tools to help you choose the right olive trees for your farm or garden.

1) Determine your USDA hardiness zone then choose your zone number in the sidebar under USDA Zone.

2) We sorted the olive trees by their primary purpose, although all the olives can be used for both curing and oil. Go to the Olive Uses tool. If you want to grow table olives to cure and eat, choose Table in the sidebar. If you want to press olive oil, choose Oil. Several of our olive trees are “dual purpose” and appear on both lists.

3) Olive trees are particularly attractive and have been a motif in art since ancient times. If you’re planning to use olive trees as edible landscaping, you’ll appreciate our tool that sorts the trees by growth habit. Within Olive Tree Habits, choose Upright for a tree that grows mostly upward, and Weeping for a tree that has drooping branches.

4) Olive trees will not be fruitful without the right pollination. Our Pollinated By tool shows you which olive trees work as pollinators for others. Some olive trees are self-pollinating, and our sorting tool will tell you that too. Would you like an introduction to fruit tree pollination? We have an article about pollination that explains the process.

With our tools you can easily choose olive trees that will thrive in your climate, produce crops for your culinary purposes—and look good doing it.

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