Neglected Olive Trees.

I have a lot of olive trees which have grown up around the old stumps.  They are large trees and some of them have six or eight trunks.  Should I cut away all but one trunk or let them alone?  There are some of the trees with small olives; others none.

If the olive trees which were originally planted were trained at first and still have a good trunk and tree form, the suckers which have intruded from below should be removed.  If, however, the trees have been allowed to grow many branches from below, so that there is really no single tree remaining, make a selection of four or five of the best shoots and grow the trees in large bush form, shortening in the higher growth so as to bring the fruit within easier reach and reduce the cost of picking.  You can also develop a single shoot into a tree as you suggest.  Of course, you must determine whether the trees as they now stand are of a variety which is worth growing.  If they are all bearing very small fruit, it would be a question whether they were worth keeping at all, because grafting on the kind of growth which you describe would be unlikely to yield satisfactory tree forms, though you might get a good deal of fruit from them.

Olives from Cuttings.

I have two choice olive trees on my place.  I am anxious to get trees from these old ones and do not know how to go about it.  Can I grow the young trees by using cuttings or slips from these old trees ?  If so, when is the proper time to select the cuttings, and how should they be planted?

Take cuttings of old wood, one-half or three-quarters of an inch in diameter, about ten inches long, and plant them about three-quarters of their length in a sandy loam soil in a row so water can be run alongside as may be necessary to keep the soil moist but not too wet.  Such dormant cuttings can be put in when the soil begins to warm up with the spring sunshine.  They can be put in the places where you desire them to grow in one or two years.  Olives, like other evergreen trees, should be transplanted in the spring when there is heat enough to induce them to take hold at once in their new places, and not during the winter when dormant deciduous trees are best transplanted.

Water and Frost.

I have in mind two pieces of land well adapted to citrus culture.  Both have the same elevation, soil, climate and water conditions, except that one piece is a mile of the Kaweah river, while the other is four or five miles distant.  In case of a frost, all conditions being about the same, which piece would you consider to be liable to suffer the more?  In the heavy frost of last December, while neither sustained any great damage, that portion of the ground nearer the river seemed to sustain the less.  Is this correct in theory?  The Kaweah river at this point is a good-sized stream of rapidly flowing water.