Arrived late at home today

Found traffic on the road...

Mars attacks! Earth fights back...

We've been pondering a plethora of options on how to minimize the damage caused by this family of insects.

A quite broad description of the damage, the menace and the palliative measures has already been given on this blog here, but for those who would like a quick reminder, the damage looks like this:

Otiorhynchus damage

Whilst the perpetrator has more or less (there are several types of them wandering around our orchards) this look:

The menace!

So, we ended with about one thousand trees with developement issues, and several tens dead . And obviously, hours and hours spent minimizing the damage. Whilst some plant infusions did have a repelling effect, those insects are active for several months and it simply was not possible to keep up with their innumerable forces on the field.

Finally, one option has been agreed as the (potentially) most effective whilst at the same time not disruptive or distructive for the orchard biodiversity,  not invasive,  not polluting, and not changing the soil chemistry. Too good to be true? I certainly hope not.

So what is this option on which we pose so much hope? Big roll of drums, it's a half millimetre worm. It's a member of the Nematodes gang: a brief and techy explanation here, and a more detailed and easy to understand here. To cut a long story short, those little guys search for the larvae of specific insects and parassite on them, thus eliminating the threat to our trees. Obviosly not all is that easy: we had to nail a narrow window of soil temperature, humidity, spray them fast as they do not swim that well, water the plants right away to push the nematodes underground... Here some pics of how it all looked:

Here are the little soldiers, kept at +8 degrees C

Now going for a swim

Stirred, not shaken...

Sprayed around the young trees...

Quickly watered in order for them to get underground...

A quick pitstop to load some more water...

On again...

Till the end of the day

And a nice sunset...

Now we have just to wait for spring and see if the nematodes worked their magic on the larvae of the leaves eating menaces! Fingers crossed...

Cold wind blues

She's cold, she's strong, and she's coming from the northeast. Some say she was born in the vastness of Siberia, and judging by her fierce gusts and biting coldness, it may as well be. It is the bora, the menace of our windrose.

The coldness, if she endures for more weeks, can freeze quite old trees, let alone the young ones. The gusts can take their toll on branches, and even eradicate trees. We had the first preview few days ago, and a torough check of the young tress and their supporting poles had to be done.

So far so good, a lotta shaking going on but no damage. Some tying up to be done here and there, but mostly small issues.

Since pictures in this case may not be descriptive enough, here are two short videos made during the control walk:





Good fun for sailing, not so much in the orchard!

The olive autumn

As one would expect, autumn brings a certain slowdown to the activities in the orchard, however not of the magnitude that would ensure a boring time to yours truly. The plants are still growing and pruning is still on the to do list, and there is a number of other things that need to be taken care of. Therefore I am quite neglecting to update you in the last few days, but here is part of what I promise to give you in the forthcoming days and weeks:

- an insight on the wind influence on the young plants

- a report on our latest try to minimize the negative influence of the insects I've been speaking about here

- some statistics and a field report on another enemy of ours

- last but not least, a preview of our logo, bottle, and label(s)!

Stay tuned!