One of the most rewarding moments for an olive grower is harvest time! Arbequina olive trees, with their bounty of small, flavorful olives, can provide a surprising yield even from a modest-sized tree. But how do you know when to pick the olives, and what’s the best way to harvest them? In this guide, we’ll walk through the stages of olive ripeness, how to determine the right time to harvest Arbequina olives based on your intended use, and practical methods for getting those olives off the tree and into your basket. Whether you plan to cure the olives for eating or press them for oil (or simply enjoy the harvest experience), here’s what you need to know.
Understanding Olive Ripeness Stages
Arbequina olives (and all olives) go through color changes as they ripen:
- Green Stage: The olives start off green. At full size but unripe, they are firm, pale green to yellowish-green. Green olives are typically harvested for making certain types of table olives (they have a more bitter, sharp flavor that some curing processes mellow into a desirable taste).
- Color Change (Veraison) Stage: Olives will begin to turn from green to shades of red, purple, or brown. Arbequinas often get a pinkish or light purple blush that then deepens. At this stage, the flesh inside is turning from hard to a bit softer and oil content is increasing.
- Fully Ripe (Black) Stage: Eventually, the olives become dark purple to black. A fully ripe Arbequina olive is usually a glossy deep purple-black and is softer to the touch (not mushy, but you can dent it with firm pressure). Inside, the flesh may have a tan or rosy color and the juice will look milky (rich in oil).
Importantly, Arbequina olives (like many varieties) do not ripen all at once. You’ll often have a mix of green, turning, and black olives on the tree simultaneously. This is normal. It actually gives you flexibility to harvest in batches if you want some green and some black.
The right time to harvest depends on how you want to use the olives:
- For making green table olives (like Spanish-style olives), you’d pick when they’re green and firm.
- For black table olives (like Greek-style olives), you’d let them ripen to black on the tree.
- For olive oil, many producers harvest when olives are in the intermediate stage – just turning color – as this can yield oil with good flavor characteristics (Arbequina oil is known for being fruity and aromatic). Fully ripe black olives yield slightly more oil but often with less pungency.
If you’re a home grower with one tree, you might not be pressing for oil unless you have at least dozens of pounds of fruit (it takes about 5-10 pounds of olives for a small bottle of oil). So most likely, you’re harvesting for curing and eating, or perhaps just to remove fruit if you’re not using it. Thus, we’ll focus on table olive harvest considerations.
When to Harvest Arbequina Olives
Climate and timing: Arbequinas in the Northern Hemisphere generally ripen from mid-fall into early winter (October through December). In a warm inland climate, they might ripen a bit earlier; in cooler coastal areas, a bit later.
To decide when to pick, use these guidelines:
- Visual cues: If you want green olives, pick when they are plump and green, before any color change. If a few are just starting to turn yellowish or a slight blush, that’s fine – it means they reached full size. For black olives, wait until the majority are dark. You don’t have to wait until every olive is black – in fact, if you do, the earliest ones might start to wrinkle or fall. Usually, when maybe 50-70% have turned black, you can do a main harvest. There will still be some green ones which you can either pick out and cure separately or leave for birds / later picking.
- Firmness: Give an olive a gentle squeeze. A green olive will be very hard. A turning olive has a little give. A black olive feels slightly soft but still intact. For green harvest, you want them hard (and obviously green). For black harvest, they should feel firm-ripe, like a ripe grape (but not burst). If you wait too long, they get overly soft or start to shrivel, which can complicate curing (since they could rot or be too dehydrated).
- Taste (careful – very bitter!): If you bite into an olive (they are extremely bitter raw, so spit it out after checking), you can gauge oiliness. Ripe olives will have a milky, oily taste (still very bitter). Green ones are just bitter and starchy. This is a bit advanced; not everyone wants to taste that bitterness, but experienced pickers sometimes do a quick “bite test” to see how far along the ripening is (the presence of milky sap means oil content is up, indicating advanced ripeness).
- Your schedule: Since olives hang well on the tree, you have leeway. If weather is calm, they can stay into winter. However, be wary of deep freezes – a hard freeze can ruin olives (they’ll get brown and mushy). Also, if heavy rains or windstorms come, ripe olives may drop or be damaged. So if a major weather event is coming, it might be better to harvest beforehand even if some are slightly under-ripe, rather than lose a lot. In short, plan harvest day on a dry day when you have time to process them soon after.
In summary: For green olives – likely mid to late fall before color change. For black olives – late fall to early winter when most have darkened. Many home growers do two harvests: one early for green, one later for black.
Harvesting Methods
Now, how to get them off the tree:
1. Hand Picking (Selective): This is the simplest – just pluck olives off the branches by hand, one by one, into a bucket or basket. It’s gentle and ensures minimal bruising (which is good because bruising can lead to spoilage when curing). Arbequinas are small, so it can be time-consuming to pick individually, but if you’re only dealing with one or a few trees, it’s manageable. Wear latex or nitrile gloves if you don’t want your fingers stained or sticky (olive juice and sap can be a bit messy). Hand picking is good if you want to harvest only the ripe ones and perhaps leave green ones to ripen more.
2. Strip Picking: Some people take a branch and run their hand down it, stripping off olives (and often some leaves). This is faster but can cause more small wounds to the fruit and knock off leaves. Since you’ll likely cure or wash the olives soon, a little leaf debris isn’t a big issue (you can separate it out), but be aware that strip-pulled olives might have more bruising. For home curing, it’s usually fine because curing will darken them anyway. Just process them promptly.
3. Rakes or Olive Combs: There are special plastic hand rakes that look like wide combs. You comb through the branch and it pulls off olives. Given Arbequinas’ weeping, twiggy branches, sometimes a small hand rake can help comb through clusters. Same caveat as strip picking – you’ll get leaves too and a bit of twig, which you’ll sort later. But it’s efficient.
4. Tarp & Shake (for larger trees or final cleanup): Spread a sheet or tarp under the tree. Gently shake branches or even use a stick to tap branches so the olives fall onto the tarp. Arbequinas attach moderately firmly to the tree, so very green ones might not drop easily, but ripe ones will. Professional harvests often use vibration (machines shake the trunk). For a backyard, shaking each limb a bit can drop a lot of the ripe olives at once. Then you gather them from the tarp. This method can result in more bruising and definitely will include the ripest (which are soft) and probably leave behind green ones still attached. It’s a good method if you’re doing a final harvest of mostly black olives or if you’re not too concerned about a few bruises (e.g., if pressing for oil or making a paste). If curing for eating, bruises can cause olives to brown faster in brine; to minimize that, be gentle in handling them after shaking.
Tip: No matter which method, try not to collect olives off the ground (unless you had a clean tarp). Once they’ve hit soil, they can pick up bacteria or dirt that’s hard to fully clean and could spoil a batch. It’s best to catch them on a tarp or pick directly.
Ladders: Use a sturdy ladder for higher branches. Many Arbequinas stay short enough to harvest from the ground or a small step ladder if pruned well. But if yours is tall, be careful. It might be worth pruning it lower the next year to avoid dangerous picking.
Handling After Harvest
Freshly picked olives are perishable. Here’s how to handle them:
- Keep them cool and out of sun. Don’t leave harvested olives sitting in the hot sun or in a hot car. They can start to ferment or rot quickly. Place your harvest basket in the shade as you pick. After picking, bring them inside or to a shaded, cool area.
- Rinse them. It’s a good idea to rinse olives in clean water to remove dust, bird droppings, or other debris. Don’t soak for long, just a rinse and quick drain. If you aren’t processing them immediately, make sure they dry off or at least don’t sit in water.
- Sort them. Go through and remove any twigs, leaves, or obviously bad olives (ones that are shriveled, have large bird pecks, or olive fly infestations – you might see a small exit hole or soft brown areas indicating a larva inside). Those should be discarded (or composted away from the tree). Sort green from black if you plan to cure in separate batches because green and black olives often do better in different curing processes for best flavor/texture.
- Use quickly or store short-term. Ideally, start your curing process (brining, dry salt, lye cure, etc., depending on your chosen method) within a day or two of harvest. The sooner, the better quality. If you need to store them for a short time, you can refrigerate them in a ventilated container or a cooler spot. Some people submerge olives in cool water (changing it daily) for a few days as a holding pattern – this actually also starts leaching out bitterness if water-cure is your eventual method. But don’t leave them in water for more than 2-3 days without changing and without starting actual curing steps, or they could ferment.
- Avoid bruising post-harvest. Handle the olives gently. Each bruise is a spot where olive might oxidize or spoil faster. That said, some curing methods intentionally crack or slit olives (like “cracked olive” styles) to speed curing – if you plan to do that, bruising is less of an issue because you’ll be physically damaging them anyway intentionally. But keep things consistent with your plan.
Curing or Processing the Olives
Harvesting is just the first part – raw olives are far too bitter to eat. You’ll likely be curing them. While a full curing guide is beyond our scope here, it’s helpful to know your path to plan harvest:
Common curing methods include:
- Brine Cure: Soaking olives in a saltwater brine for many weeks to months. This is a popular and easy method for Arbequinas. It takes longer but preserves flavor. Green olives may take a couple months; black can sometimes cure faster. You can add flavorings (herbs, citrus) in the final brine.
- Water Cure: Changing water daily to leach out bitterness over 1-2 weeks, then finishing with brine. This is quicker but can result in more fermented flavors if not careful.
- Lye Cure: Using a lye (sodium hydroxide) solution to chemically remove bitterness, then multiple water rinses and a final brine. This is the fastest (days) and yields that classic mild canned black olive flavor, but it’s more complex and requires caution handling lye.
- Dry Salt Cure: Packing ripe olives in salt (sometimes with herbs) which dehydrates and cures them, resulting in wrinkled, intense olives (like oil-cured style). Arbequinas are small but can be dry-salt cured to make a rich, almost raisin-like olive. Best done with black ones.
- Cracked Olive Cure: Particularly for green olives, you crack each olive (with a mallet or such) and then brine or pack in seasonings. Cracking speeds up flavor absorption and bitterness removal. Arbequinas are small, so cracking them is fiddly, but possible.
Knowing which method you want helps determine if you harvest more green or more black. For example, if you prefer milder, firm green olives (like Spanish olives), you’ll pick early and brine cure those green. If you love rich, black, ripe olives (like Greek Kalamata style), you’ll harvest later and possibly do a brine with vinegar or a dry salt cure for that style.
Also note: If making olive oil at home, you’d need to press or mill the olives very soon (within 1-2 days of harvest) for best quality. That usually involves either an oil press or a DIY approach (crushing olives, pressing the paste). It’s a project beyond simple harvesting, but timing is crucial since olives start to degrade after harvest for oil purposes.
Post-Harvest Tree Care
After you’ve harvested, your olive tree will likely still have some olives left (especially green ones if you picked mostly ripe). You have a couple options:
- Leave them for wildlife: Birds will enjoy remaining olives over winter. Just be prepared for some clean-up of pits under the tree later.
- Complete harvest later: You can do a second pass a few weeks later to get any that turned black subsequently. Or knock them off to prevent mess or pests.
- Normal tree care: Harvesting doesn’t harm the tree (unlike fruit like peaches or apples, olives don’t really mind whether you remove the fruit or let it fall). After harvest, the tree will start shifting to its winter mode. In fact, in some regions, they prune right after harvest (late fall) to shape the tree. You might incorporate light pruning, but avoid heavy pruning if freezing weather is near. Often it’s best to wait until late winter to prune. But you can certainly remove any broken branches or those that were in your way during picking.
Give the tree a thank-you drink of water if the soil is dry, since fruiting can deplete some energy. And look forward to next spring’s blooms!
Enjoying the Fruits of Your Labor
Once your Arbequina olives are cured (which might be weeks or months after harvesting), you’ll have a very special treat: home-cured olives or perhaps your own olive oil. The flavor of a cured Arbequina is often buttery, nutty, and aromatic. They can be marinated with garlic, lemon, rosemary, chili – whatever you like – once they’re cured and stored in brine or olive oil.
One tree may produce enough for a few jars of olives to share with friends and family. It’s a true farm-to-table experience from your backyard.
So when harvest time comes, gather your supplies, invite a friend or two to help (olive picking can be a fun group activity), and enjoy the process. It’s a connection to ancient traditions, and it makes you appreciate every olive (especially when pitting them later – you’ll never take a jar of olives for granted again!).
Happy harvesting, and bon appétit when the time comes to taste those Arbequina olives!