Page:The Olive Its Culture in Theory and Practice.djvu/46

38 To temper too warm a climate water seems to be resorted to. In the Island of Candia in the Mediterranean on the thirty-fourth parallel the olives fruit regularly when watered, if they receive no water it is quite doubtful if the flowers set or not. In Athens, Greece, if they are not irrigated their yield is very uncertain. In Africa—both in Morocco and Algiers—in order to secure a crop it becomes absolutely necessary to give them water. In Valencia and Murcia, Spain, it is the usual practice to water the olive, and indeed with a loose soil and dry climate the irrigated trees respond with the surest crop. But the soil, the climate and the exposure must be the guide and indicate the necessity. Owing to the extreme dryness of the California summer, it is possible it may become needful in certain localities to irrigate the orchard in order to insure a crop. To deal with sections where there are apt to be cold snaps, the only remedy is to chose those varieties more nearly resembling the wild type which are hardier and better able to resist low temperature. The smaller the tree and the closer to the ground it grows naturally, the more likely it is to be damaged by a frost. On the Quito farm the late cold weather did absolutely no harm although there were trees on the place of not more than three years of age, and the mercury touched sixteen degrees above zero. Even a higher temperature than this has been fatal to olive trees, but that has been the result of a sudden thawing after a cold night. Anything lower than fourteen degrees of cold is too chilling for the olive to endure; such weather not only will kill the leaves and branches, but even the wood itself will succumb. The olive is not so hardy as the grapevine, the latter requiring only ten thousand eight hundred degrees Fahrenheit to ripen its fruit, whereas the olive needs twelve thousand seven hundred degrees, although some varieties will ripen with ten thousand eight hundred degrees, from blossoming time to maturity, among which is the Spanish Manzanillo. To ascertain whether any particular locality in California is suitable for olive