How best to prune an olive tree

[BarbieKew]

Someone gave me a fairly mature olive tree, it’s about 6-7 feet tall. It has three main radial branches but has been shoved in the corner of a garden for years. Two of the branches have grown beautifully, the third has only scant signs of ang new shoots, so the whole thing looks unbalanced.

Is there anything I can do to encourage growth from the third branch?

Have you moved it? I assume the crap branch was the one on the corner?

Sorry. I misunderstood. I assume the corner was before you got it? Any chance of a picture please?

Yes it was in the corner of my friend’s garden and she gave it to us as we have full sun. The two healthy branches have flourished since, and the third one has vague signs of greenery but just hasn’t taken off. The three branches are about equidistant so there’s a whole third of the tree with no leaves.

I just want to know if I can someone encourage growth on the weak branch, or if I need to lop it off and hope that over the years it grows back!

Not at home at mo but will take a photo when I can.

Okay @BarbieKew yes you can encourage the weaker branch. But the issue is that at the moment, the tree is putting all its energy and growth hormones into the strongly growing branches. So what you need to do is redistribute that and thin out some of the strongest growth in those.

This isn't the right time of year to do it though, you need to wait until May next year and do it then. That is the time when it will be wanting to burst into new growth, and any cuts you make will heal over quickly. In the meantime, give it a feed of some balanced fertiliser and if there are any other shrubs or bushes which are hanging over and shading out that weaker branch, then it would be a good idea to remove those to let more light in.

Is it in a big pot or in the ground? If it is in a pot, you could turn it round to face the other way for a bit.

It’s in a big pot and I’ve had the weak branch in south facing all summer. It has sprouted a tiny bit but the other two branches have grown loads.

I’ll take a photo this week, sounds like there’s no big rush for me to do anything though!