Do you know which critters eat lemons?
One of my two trees looks a bit more promising this year!
The other one has “mini mees”.
Must be even more drought stressed.
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I thought it was pretty simple to cure olives, either salted or treated in lye. I mean it’s not like making a complex dish. Our water is alkaline, so not much lye is needed, it’s simple to cure them in gallon jars, and they store for a long time.
They can make a mess, you’re right, but not if you pick them before they fall. Also, ours are between houses growing in dirt. So I guess i’m being flip about it- sorry
A sourpuss! 
The caterpillar of the Giant Swallowtail might go after lemons.
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It’s a fairly lengthy process and depends on: what type of olive one is using and what style of olive one is making. You’re right in that it’s not like spending all day prepping a complex dish. But, olives are usually bitter or hard and inedible until treated. Greek olives, made with Mission or Manzanillo are about the simplest to make. The fruits are mixed with a lot of coarse salt and stirred once a week. The juice drains away and after six weeks, they’re done.
Typical green olives get a strong lye bath, 21/2 ounces per gallon of water. Then, after lye has penetrated mostly to the pit (2/3-3/4), they get soaked in cold water which gets changed a minimum of four times a day for a couple days. After that, they’re fermented in salt solution for about 6 months. After this, the product can be acid-stabilized by adding vinegar.
The softer, black olives often require three lye baths, repeated exposure to air, multiple washing, soaking and a final brining.
Here’s a “simple” method for kalamata olives.
There are many other methods to cure olives, but I’ve not seen one that didn’t take some researched, learned effort and a lot of time.
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I learn things here every day. Thank you.
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i got tired just reading that.
I’ve cured olives using this method. We canned them in the salt brine. They were some of the best olives I have ever eaten.
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Our neighbor had an olive tree that used to drop about 40% of it’s fruit in our yard. I always planned to collect a bunch of them and cure them, but never got around to it, largely because the process seemed pretty daunting. Fortunately, the neighbor solved my dilemma by pruning the tree so drastically that we now get zero fruit in our yard. (It was pruned so severely I think he killed it.)
Same here
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Nice! That single lye bath seems like it would preserve more flavors than the repeated treatments.
When you canned them, was it a boiling bath? If the olives are sufficiently acidic, that should be ok.
Yes, boiling water bath. It’s been so long I can’t remember timing.
Please join me in welcoming Sungold #100 2024. We weren’t sure we would get here, but we did. Hardest working plant on the balcony.
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Molto bene!
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Grazie mille!
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Amazing! Is this your $64 tomato, or was it more productive than that? I am impressed by its perfectly circular roundness.
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I am well amortized by now, so my tomatoes are essentially free. A packet of seeds lasts me 4ish years, and I have all the pots and dirt and fertilizer I need. There’s work involved, of course, but it takes less than 10:00/day. So I think I’m at least breaking even.
White flesh or pink? I love the taste of guava but hate the seeds, so I usually don’t buy them.
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white
