How olive trees react to cold and freezing weather

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Oh, the joy of growing an olive tree! Even though olive is associated to warm Mediterranean weather, freezing cold also plays a crucial part in olive bearing.

Let’s check how low temperatures influence olive trees, especially freezing. Learn how to harden your olive tree.

Read also:

• Regrow a frozen olive tree
• Why olive needs cold weather

It has been said time and time again that the Olive tree is a hardy fruit tree. However, it does have limits, and those who ignore them might be in for an unpleasant surprise.

Low temperature drops and damage to olive trees

Here is a table that shows how olive trees suffer in case of low temperature (numbers for the hardier ‘Arbequina’ variety, mostly):

This is for when other conditions are the best possible. Olive tree hardiness isn’t good whenever the following happens:

• rain in the days immediately before freezing
• sudden temperature drop, instead of a slow, week-long drop
• wind blows. As for humans, the “perceived” cold is greater with wind
• tree is young, below 10 years of age

The numbers above are mostly based on the Arbequina variety, which is hardier. Similarly hardy is the French Picholine variety. Most other varieties are more vulnerable.

• For example, for the Italian ‘Frantoio’ cultivar, twig death and limb dieback already occur at 12°F or -11°C instead of 5°F or -15°C as shown above.

It’s possible to reduce damage by freezing to olive trees by winterizing them. Another solution if your area gets too cold is to grow olive trees in containers, so you can bring them indoors during cold waves.

Impact of freezing on the olive tree

The olive tree grows all along the Mediterranean area, and in modern times has spread to North and South America, Northern Africa, and more. In each of these places, frost regularly happens either because of latitude (growing farther North) or because of elevation (atop hills or on mountain slopes).

For fruit-bearing, olive oil quality, olive tree leaves, let’s observe how frost and freezing impacts this beloved tree.

Impact of freezing on olive tree flower formation

The best (optimal) flower formation happens when daily temperatures in winter are as follows:

• winter daytime temperatures fluctuate between 15 and 19°C
• winter nighttime temperatures fluctuate between 4 and 6°C

Freezing halts flower formation altogether, and deep freezes lower than 20°F (-7°C) can start destroying flowers in the bud.

Impact of freezing on olive oil quality

Sometimes olives are harvested after freezing. This changes the quality of the oil.

• carotenoid and chlorophyll contents differ
• oil is more luminous and transparent
• oil is less stable (has a shorter shelf life)
• less bitter
• less pungent smell, more delicate
• increase in phenols like vanillic acid and vanillin, which makes the olive oil sweeter.

Overall, moderate freezing has a positive impact on olive oil quality, even if it should be consumed faster (within the year instead of over several years).

However, excessive freezing is detrimental as it releases compounds into the oil that aren’t usually present.

Impact of freezing on olive tree leaves

When freezing occurs, leaves that are towards the end of twigs and on the outside of the olive tree canopy are the most vulnerable.

• Leaf tips, where active, growing, and water-filled cells are, die and turn brown.
• If freezing lasts or deepens, older leaves fall off first. Olive tree leaves usually last two or three years on the tree.
• Olive leaves may develop chlorosis or loss of color, having yellow or orange spots. This shows where some parts of the leaf have died.
• Leaves that are under a year old are last to drop.
• If leaf buds are hit, in spring they’ll grow into deformed, twisted, irregular leaves. Some leaves bear discolored portions.
• Unless a frost-bitten tree develops olive knot (or olive canker), the twisted leaves aren’t a disease and the tree doesn’t require treatment.
• Due to damaged leaves and sap vessels, production and yield may be lower in case of excessive freezing.

Note that light freezing, however, has a beneficial impact on olive production. However, the exact circumstances when this occurs aren’t fully known.

Hardening olive trees

Plants can learn! It is possible to “teach” an olive tree to resist the cold. However, this requires incremental steps.

• Getting your olive tree used to the cold is a long process.
• Most important is to ensure that transitions are slow.
• This occurs naturally when autumn slowly turns into winter.
• Acclimation is the botanical term to describe this.

For example, never make a greenhouse-grown olive tree spend an entire winter freezing outside in one go!

The process is the same if you’re dealing with container-grown olive trees that stayed indoors, or if you’ve got a large greenhouse with trees growing in the ground in it:

• Track the temperature at night (lowest temperature) and how many nights or hours it has lived through at that temperature.
• Adjust protections to the tree to control the lowest temperature reached.

Consider that once a tree has survived 100 hours (or about 12 nights) at a given temperature, it has “learned” to function or survive at that temperature. Its comfort zone can be extended downwards. To do that, adjust protections to lower the lowest temperature down by 1 or 2 degrees.

It may take years, but carefully monitoring how long your tree has been subjected to the cold can help you decide if extra protections are needed or not.

Note that you can’t increase hardiness forever. At most 4 to 5 degrees can be won, compared to what is normal for that variety.

As proof that this can happen, it is quite common to see that older trees show less damage than younger trees, even for twigs, buds and branches that are the same size.

Read also:

• How to prepare an olive tree for winter
• Olive tree care (planting, pruning, harvest, diseases)
• Grow an olive tree in the North!
• All our articles on the olive tree