The English Olive Press; May ‘26
The month of April saw us in The Times newspaper and welcome some great visitors to the grove . The weather gave us fog, frosts, cold winds and some sunny days; it does feel like the olive trees have endured four seasons in one month and reminds us that the weather is the boss!
Welcome to the May edition of the English Olive Club Newsletter, looking back over what we have been up to in the olive grove in April. A big welcome to all our new subscribers and thank you all for your support and engagement to The English Olive Co on social media.
April has been a dry month with no rain recorded! We have given the olive trees four irrigation events to help their growing, totalling about 90mm of water. We had some frosts, some bitterly cold eastly winds, some fog, and also the hottest day of the year so far, with temperatures at the grove reaching 26C at the middle of the month. These temperature swings have been unhelpful for the olive trees as they start to wake up and put out new tender shoots and branches. Some of these shoots looked to have been burnt off by the frosts and winds, but others seem OK. Time will tell what effect this weather has done to the trees, but we do not want to start pruning and de-suckering work too early.
Back in March we started to notice that a couple of hundred trees had leaves looking a bit off colour, as mentioned in last months Newsletter. Unfortunately these trees do not seem to be recovering and most of the leaves have now turned brown. To see if there is any chance of them re-shooting they have been given a strong pruning and we will see what happens over the next few months.
Being the worlds most northerly commercial olive grove is a risk and has many challenges; the weather is the boss and continually reminds us of that!
Trickle irrigation started, the cold claimed a few trees, but luckily the majority still look healthy!
With no rain since the middle of March we are pleased for the investment in the farms reservoir, which was built in 2018. Excess winter rainfall that fills up the local dykes and drains has a proportion extracted via an Environment Agency Abstraction Licence, and we generally fill our reservoir through the winter months with this water. This is good clean water that otherwise would go out to The Wash and the North Sea, and then becomes too saline to use. The reservoir is about 10 acres in size (about 6 football pitches) and can hold about 80 million litres of waters (about 32 Olympic swimming pools).
Underground pipes take this water around the farm to then be available for us to irrigate our growing crops when needed. In addition to the olives, in 2025 this included potatoes, peas, mustard seed, leeks, kale and spinach. For the olives we use a permanent black pipe on every row of trees with emitters (holes) every 60cm, and water drips out at a prescribed rate to water the trees as required. A soil moisture probe and a good spade combine technology and experience to help judge when the trees need irrigation.
The wet winter allowed the 10 acre farm reservoir to be re-filled ready to be used in dry times.
In April we were very fortunate to be featured in an article in The Times newspaper, written by Seren Hughes. Seren wrote about the journey to our first olive harvest which took place in November / December 2025, the first use of our new olive mill line and the quality analysis of the oil. It was great to have the laboratory results confirm our first small batch of olive oil as extra virgin quality, and we hope that harvest 2026 gives us the opportunity to pick, wash, mill and bottle a great product again, but hopefully have more availability! A more detailed covering of the article can be found under our News section on the website, posted on 3rd April.
Following the visit by Anastasis last month, who is a Greek olive oil grower, producer and world wide olive oil competition taster (see April newsletter) he wrote an article in the Greek newspaper on our climate boundary pushing English olive grove, and also saw potatoes being planted on the farm, being grown for UK supermarket contracts. Greek olives and olive oil are well known for their excellent quality, and the Greeks are also trying to improve their potato production and quality to help drive export sales.
Foodies & restaurant experts Sophie & her father Jeremy visit. Philip & Matt from Great Food Club Bee swarm!
We always enjoy listening and learning from those with knowledge, experience and connections, and during April we were lucky enough to have a couple of visitors to the olive grove. Sophie and her father Jeremey have extensive experience in the restaurant trade and they are both foodies. It was great to hear where they see consumer demand going and how agri-tourism and wellness could offer opportunities for the future, and gave us some top tips for when we hopefully open the olive grove to the public for visits, tours and tastings in the future.
We also had Philip and Matt from Great Food Club call in for a flying visit during their 192 mile 7 stop food tour through Rutland, Lincolnshire & Nottinghamshire, all done in one day! The Great Food Club give recommendations and write ups for places for eating and drinking in the East Midlands. Their 2026 handbook is a great local guide, and opens the way for many future connections. For anyone who oves their local food and drink please follow this link. www.greatfoodclub.co.uk.
The last swarm of visitors turned up unannounced in the olive grove at the end of April! The estimated 15,000-20,000 honey bees chose one tree and support stake to make a temporary stop over, before Darren from Rescue Honey collected them for us, and put them in a new hive in a safe and more suitable location. Darren collected the swarm in under 5 minutes by knocking off 1/3 of the swarm into a bait box, and within that group was the queen. The rest of the bees duly followed their queen. With an exposed site and the strong winds the swarm did well to stay attached until Darren came to the rescue!
We look forward to some more stable warmer weather during the month of May, and to the olive trees branching and flowering, hopefully without any frosts around!
Have a great month, and we will keep you up to date on social media until our next English Olive Press.
Best wishes,
David