Entlings

Entlings - Planting our baby olive trees

In the end of March we started planting our new olive trees. 90 baby Mignola entlings! It took us about 2 months to prepare and plant. It was a lot of hard work, but some of the most satisfying and rewarding I’ve ever experienced! It gave us a real feeling of progress to see the orchard restored to its original plant density and see the Costa vibrating with energy and new life. It will probably be 30 years before our trees resemble “real trees” and begin to produce any significant amount of fruit. In the meantime we’ll patiently accompany them along their first few years, and enjoy watching them grow in the their new home. 

The Mignola variety

Mignola is a rare variety, indigenous to the area around Cingoli. It produces an extraordinary and entirely unique olive oil with aromas that express forest berry flavors with notes of raspberries and strawberries. It's particularly rich in health promoting polyphenols, responsible for its bold flavor and bitter almond aftertaste. 

Mignola is an endangered species. Almost all of the existing Mignola trees are centuries old (just like our old ladies) and this variety is rarely replanted due to the popularity of more common "national" varieties. The fact that it's notoriously difficult to harvest (Mignola literally "sticks" to the trees, requiring 100% hand harvesting) and that the ancient trees are often subject to alternating production years, have contributed to the gradual abandon on the Mignola variety. 

Luckily we were able to find some four-year old Mignola trees at a local nursery and we are replanting Mignola trees at Costa Digiano.

The work:
Marking the rows:

First we decided where to place the new trees by measuring out the old grove and marking the new planting sites with bamboo poles. Our goal was to restore the original grove by filling in the “holes” in the ancient orchard where trees had previously been and had died or been removed. Our replanting follows the traditional low plant density of approximately 10m x 10m.

Digging the holes:

Then we hired our friend Max to come up with his giant back hoe and dig 90 holes, each hole 1m3. The dig was a lot of fun and it was fascinating to begin to see the soil variation in different areas of the Costa. It’s a large hole for a small tree, but it’s important to break up the earth surrounding the new trees to give their roots space to expand and develop.

Planting:

We then began the long task of planting. Planting consists basically in shoveling 1 cubic meter of earth back into the holes and then placing the trees. I never could have imagined how back breaking moving that much dirt would be! Each tree has a spindly little trunk and needs to be supported by a tutor for the first few years of life. We used Acacia and Bamboo poles we cut down while clearing the jungle around the house. 

Mulching

After planting we went back and mulched all the trees with the organic mulch we've been making all winter. This mulch is useful in maintaining soil humidity (to reduce the need for irrigation) and adds organic matter to the soil while helping keep weeds away from the young trees. 

Irrigating:

Thankfully the spring was perfect with alternating days of sun and rain. However, June turned hot and dry and moved into a heat wave and then on to one of the worst draughts in a decade. Our little trees cannot survive these conditions without regular watering, so we’ve become creative in inventing systems to irrigate. Our latest system utilizes a siphon to gravity feed water from our well through a 100m long tube that runs into the top of the olive grove. From here I fill a 200L steel vat that I’ve tied into the back of the pick-up truck and I’m then able to drive around the farm watering each individual tree with a garden hose or a watering can. It’s quite time consuming but it’s the best system we’ve come up with so far. My brother Clay and I are designing a gravity flow drip irrigation system that will feed all 90 trees as well as provide the infrastructure for planting aromatic herbs along the rows, but it will take time and money to implement this, so in the meanwhile about 3 days a week are dedicated to watering the new trees.

Helping out

Adopt a tree:
Planting olive trees is a big investment in the future and our baby Mignola trees are looking for sponsors to help support their planting and initial irrigation. A huge thank you goes to our dear friends and first 2 sponsors Jutta and Uli Rommelt from Switzerland, who adopted the first 2 trees in May and gave me the idea for adopt a tree! 

How it works:
Adopt a tree is a one time small contribution that will help finance the planting of the trees and implementation of our drip irrigation system. Your tree will feature a hand painted plaque with your name on it and a photo of your tree along with the possibility to pre-order our extra virgin olive oil before it’s released and quickly sells out. For more information on how to help support our project by adopting your own tree please click here.

To visit the photo gallery with more pictures of the new olive grove click here.