The Cultivation

The cultivation of olives is an ancient tradition of the Mediterranean peoples. In Vatika, at the heart of the Mediterranean, the residents embraced this cultivation and the benefits of olive oil. Thus, a tradition that spans thousands of years continues today, carried on by the region’s growers who inherit it from their ancestors.

Caring for the olive tree is a year-round process and includes interventions such as pruning, irrigation, and the fight against weeds that affect the olive tree and its fruit. Pruning the olive tree is responsible for maintaining its health, removing dead parts, ensuring balanced growth, better aeration, and better access to sunlight for the fruit. It is an extremely important process that begins with the harvest of the fruit and continues almost until March to prepare the olives for the next year. Irrigation has favorable effects on the growth, flowering, and fruiting of the olive tree, while weed control, mainly with bait, ensures the superior quality of olive oil.

Harvesting the olives by the producers is done either by hand or with gentle mechanical means that ensure healthy fruit and excellent final olive oil. In our region, it starts in early October and lasts until the end of the year, earlier than in other areas that start a month later. This is due to the unique climatic conditions of the region, which favor olive cultivation and contribute to the production of one of the highest quality olive oils worldwide.

The olive varieties in almost all of the local cultivation are the so-called local Athenolia variety (Mastoideis – Tsounati) and the Koroneiki variety.