Newbie olive advice

[BlackPaul]

Hi everyone, I dug up an olive a couple of months ago and now I've got growth coming up all over the place. Advice I've read is to sit tight and watch it grow, but this thing is looking like an echidna, some places have about 10 or 20 new shoots in a square inch. Should I be cleaning these guys out? The gardener in me knows that no good can come from 20 branches coming out in one spot, but I'd like to hear what you experts have to say. I'm not really Joe Bonsai so my previous experience with olives is either killing them or harvesting fruit.

Cheers for any advice.

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[shibui]

Leaves feed roots and your olive needs lots of new roots. I tend to leave as many new shoots as possible for the first year to help get the roots going. Even then roots will still be really poor for a few more years.
Keep an eye on it. If you think there might be an issue with inappropriate thickening then remove some but still leave as many as you can manage.

[robb63]

Hi Paul
As a newcomer to bonsai myself I have had difficulty learning to leave trees alone.
I read here that collected trees need 2 or 3yrs to recover and though people were exaggerating.
After killing a few good trees chopping and repotting too soon I decided 2yrs was not so long.
cheers

[BlackPaul]

Thanks guys. I guess not being used to watching trees come back from this sort of trauma makes me uncertain about what to expect. I thought I'd see a few shoots, not a full beard.

[Matt S]

The hardest thing to do in Bonsai is to leave a tree alone, but for a dug up olive you should put away the scissors for a year. Next spring you can choose the shoots you want and remove the rest, there’s no need to leave it any longer in our climate.
Having lots of shoots is a good sign and you might as well get used to it because your tree will continue to push out shoots all over the trunk for as long as you have it! I have an olive I dug over 25 years ago and I’m still removing shoots from the base and trunk.

Matt.

[shibui]

Having lots of shoots is a good sign and you might as well get used to it because your tree will continue to push out shoots all over the trunk for as long as you have it!

Matt's right Not all trees will do this but olives are really good at buds. They don't need constant pruning like maples but that's more than made up for with cutting shoots from the base. Olives grow and thicken quite slowly so there's little chance of excessive thickening from having a bunch of shoots in inappropriate spots. As I said, just monitor for this year and only remove if you really feel it is necessary.

I have an olive I dug over 25 years ago and I’m still removing shoots from the base and trunk.

Looks like an ongoing job for as long as I grow them

[BlackPaul]

Sat out in the sunshine and watched it grow. Literally watched new leaves opening up, it was mad.

Sure I waste my time. Don't judge me