Olive Tree Fertilizer

Olive Tree Fertilizer is made for light, steady feeding, which suits olives better than heavy applications, since they evolved in lean Mediterranean soils. Mix 2 tablespoons per gallon of water and apply every 1–2 weeks in spring and summer while your tree is actively growing, then every 4 weeks in fall and winter. A hose-end sprayer on the 1-ounce setting covers the root zone of an in-ground tree, and you can mist the foliage with 1 teaspoon per quart every 1–2 weeks if you like. Fold it into your normal watering.

Less than most fruit trees. Olives are adapted to poor, well-draining soils, so the goal is steady light nutrition rather than a heavy diet. Too much fertilizer, especially high nitrogen, pushes soft leafy growth at the expense of flowers and fruit. Olive Tree Fertilizer is built around that: its 3-3.6-5.1 ratio keeps nitrogen moderate and weights phosphorus and potassium higher, so your tree gets what it needs for silver-green foliage, flowering and fruit without being driven into growth it can’t support. A consistent schedule is the whole approach.

Several causes are common, and most aren’t nutritional. Young trees simply aren’t mature enough yet; olives need a period of winter chill to flower; and many varieties set fruit better with a second variety nearby for pollination. Where nutrition does play a part, boron shortfall is a known cause of poor fruit set in olives, and Olive Tree Fertilizer carries boron along with the phosphorus and potassium that support flowering and fruit. Feeding supports your tree, but chill, maturity and pollination are usually the deciding factors.

Olive Tree Fertilizer is a dilute liquid feed, and dilution is what matters here. Fertilizer burn happens when concentrated salts sit against the roots: too much product in too little water, or granules piled at the base of a tree. Mixed at 2 tablespoons per gallon and applied every 1–2 weeks in the growing season, the nutrients arrive in solution at a strength the roots take up as they water, in the well-draining soil olives need. For newly planted or potted olives still establishing, start at half strength for the first two feedings.

New growth greens up within the first few weeks of feeding during the growing season, since the nitrate nitrogen and micronutrients in Olive Tree Fertilizer are available to the roots as soon as they’re watered in. Olives grow slowly and steadily, so vigor and the color of the silver-green foliage respond first. Flowering and fruiting follow your tree's own cycle and maturity over seasons; regular feeding through those seasons supports the tree, but the crop arrives on the olive’s timeline rather than the fertilizer’s.