This year has been a good one for olives (at least, for the olive tree in a
pot we have in the back garden) and we have some reasonable sized olives -
probably enough to fill one large jar. This could be the year we process our
first crop of olives :-)

What surprised me (although I guess it shouldn't have) is how thirsty the
trees are when bearing fruit.

I noticed a while back that the olives were wrinkly and wondered why, as the
tree in general looked perfectly happy and the small crop of weeds in the
pot (left in as indicators of soil health) were a nice green colour and
healthy so the pot wasn't starved or very dry.

However when we had the massive downpour a few weeks back and the pot got a
good watering off the garage roof I noticed that the olives were now plump.

Yesterday I noticed they were wrinkly again and gave the pot a good
watering.
Now they have plumped up again - currently a light green colour with an
attractive light freckling.
This makes me wonder if I should have been massively watering the pot to
encourage the olives to grow big and juicy - something to consider for next
year.

Anyone else got olives cropping at the moment?

Previous years ours have been tiny but have turned black eventually. I am
now in a quandry - should I harvest them soon as green olives or should I
wait until they turn black and risk losing the crop to birds, frost, gales
etc. later on this autumn?

Cheers

Dave R