How To Prune Olive Trees: Step-by-Step Guide (When, How & Hard Pruning)

Pruning has positive effects on the olive trees. We prune the olive tree to maintain tip-top health, like building a solid trunk and crown frame; this allows the tree to withstand heavy load and high winds.

In this post, I’ll show you the exact process I follow when pruning olive trees in my grove, when to do it, and I’ll also uncover some secrets to better pruning so you can have richer yields.

If you want to see where pruning sits among everything else your tree needs through the year, I’ve put the whole season into an olive tree care calendar.

How To Prune an Olive Tree: The Short Answer

To prune an olive tree, remove root suckers and vertical water sprouts first, then thin out dead, crossing and inward-growing branches until sunlight reaches the center of the canopy. Keep three or four strong lateral branches as the permanent framework and make clean 45-degree cuts with sharp, sanitized tools.

The best time to do it is late winter to early spring, once the risk of hard frost has passed but before new growth starts.

That’s the whole method in two paragraphs. Everything below is the detail that makes the difference between a tree that fruits well and one that just survives.

When Is the Best Time To Prune Olive Trees?

The best time to prune olive trees is in the late winter or early spring, just before the tree starts its new growth for the year. Olive trees grow slowly and generally don’t require much pruning, so pruning only once a year is enough.

The reason for that window is simple: your tree won’t start producing fruit before the blooming process, so you want your cuts made and healing before the buds break.

According to Nicholas Wray, “Sunlight is essential for olive growth, but they shouldn’t be allowed to dry out.” So pruning in early spring will also repair any damage brought on by harsh frosts.

You should prune at a particular time depending on your location and the environment. Never prune on frosty days, or if any frost is predicted in the coming days.

Winter Pruning: Wait Until the Frost Risk Has Passed

The ideal time to begin pruning is at the end of winter, when there is very little chance of frosts and freezing winds. Making sure your plants won’t be exposed to harsh weather is important, because pruning trees encourages growth.

The tissue is more likely to be damaged when you cut a plant. If you get mild winters with no early spring frost damage, you can begin pruning even before winter ends.

It is risky to prune in cold weather before bud break, though. There’s a good chance the residual tissue will be damaged by frost, which slows the healing process. This is also why I don’t touch a tree while it’s deep in olive tree dormancy — the wound just sits open with no growth to close it.

Summer Pruning: Suckers and Water Sprouts Only

Olive trees often undergo pruning during the summer when they are actively growing, and this pruning is typically restricted to removing water sprouts and suckers.

Although your plant’s development won’t be affected by early summer pruning, the quality of the fruit produced during the growing season will undoubtedly be impacted. So keep summer work light — pull the suckers, leave the structure alone.

When To Prune Olive Trees in the UK

In the UK, prune olive trees in early spring, typically March to April, once the last hard frosts have passed. The UK’s cooler, wetter climate means the frost window closes later than in the Mediterranean, so the Croatian timing I use won’t translate directly.

The Royal Horticultural Society recommends pruning olives in early spring to keep an attractive shape and remove any dead, diseased or dying branches.

Most UK olives are grown in containers and moved somewhere frost-free over winter. If that’s you, prune after you bring the tree back outside in spring, not before you put it away in autumn — a freshly cut tree going into a cold winter is a tree that will struggle.

When You Should NOT Prune an Olive Tree

Skip pruning entirely if:

• Frost is forecast within the next week.
• The tree is in its first or second year in the ground — let it establish.
• The tree is in full bloom or setting fruit. You’ll knock off the crop.
• It’s the middle of a heat wave or a drought. The tree is already stressed.
• It’s autumn, right before winter. New growth won’t have time to harden off.

The one exception is dead or clearly diseased wood, which you can and should remove at any time of year. Otherwise, the natural moment is late winter — after you’ve harvested your olives and before the new season starts.

What Tools Do You Need To Prune Olive Trees?

Make sure your pruning tools are clean, sharp, and ready to use before you do anything else. You might possess a few pieces of outdated equipment that you inherited from a friend or relative.

You only need the proper equipment to prune your olive tree. Misusing a tool could result in you pruning your olive tree more than you intended.

Additionally, using older tools increases the risk of transmitting tree diseases. So cleaning your pruning equipment is a good strategy. At this point you’re probably wondering which tool to add to your collection and how to properly clean the ones you already have.

The Right Tools for the Job

Hand saws, chainsaws, and shears are the best tools anyone can use while pruning.

Use pruning shears for shoots that are no larger than 2.5 cm (about 0.98 in) in diameter. To reduce fatigue, it is preferable to use shock-absorbent shears.

Use a pruning saw for branches with a diameter of up to 7.5 cm (about 2.95 in). These branches are typically found in the canopy’s middle. Here, a stiff blade of about 38 cm (about 1.25 ft) in length will be ideal.

For the interior vertical branches that sit just out of comfortable reach, a bypass lopper saves you a lot of ladder work and a lot of forearm. This is the tool I reach for most after the shears.

You need a chainsaw for the massive, important center branches. Make sure the chainsaw is lightweight and take brief, regular pauses. Make sure you are standing on a firm surface and wearing protective gear.

Related: Best Tools For Pruning Olive Trees

How To Sanitize Your Pruning Tools

The ideal treatment is a 10% bleach solution, made up of 1 part bleach and 9 parts water. Leave your instruments in the bleach mixture for 5 to 10 minutes.

This isn’t optional fussiness. Dirty blades are one of the most reliable ways to spread common olive tree diseases from one tree to the next — and if you’re working down a row, you can infect a whole grove in an afternoon.

Sanitize between trees, not just at the start of the day. And make your cuts slanted so water doesn’t soak into them and infect your tree.

How To Prune Olive Trees Step by Step (5 Steps)

Now that you have the appropriate tools and the timing right, here’s the actual sequence I follow on every tree.

Step 1: Shape Your Olive Tree

When you trim a tree, you don’t just randomly cut. A goal should always be in your thoughts. Usually it’s to shorten stems or branches that have grown too long, become brittle, or died.

For pruning trees you can consider different shapes like Vase, Globe, and Vase Bush. But the martini glass-shaped olive trees are the best. These trees grow in a triangular shape and have strong, long trunks. The entire tree does not have to be cut with flat sides — instead, shape your tree according to the martini glass.

Once your tree is about 1 m tall, you can start pruning and shaping. In the early years you’ll just prune to shape the tree, not to affect fruit production. A lot of chopping might hinder the growth of young olive trees, so try to avoid it.

Related: How To Shape an Olive Tree

Step 2: Pick Three or Four Sturdy Lateral Branches

Pick three or four sturdy branches that are growing largely outward and upward from the trunk to serve as your tree’s main support structure as you start to form it into a martini glass. Even if they are developing downward, leave the tiny branches that emerge from these branches.

If your tree only has two strong lateral branches, remove any that appear to be very weak or overly vertical. The next year, look for two more robust branches to keep. Your tree should eventually have four sturdy lateral branches for its primary framework.

Step 3: Maintain the Lateral Branches

Lateral branches mean secondary branches. The canopy of your olive tree is made up of lateral branches, which is why maintaining them is so essential.

Some of the lateral branches sprouting off your main branches will turn old as your tree ages. At fruit harvesting time you’ll notice these are the older branches that may have once produced fruit but no longer do. Cut the exhausted and weak ones to encourage your tree to grow more fruitful branches.

Step 4: Remove Root Suckers and Vertical Branches

To prevent root suckers from consuming your tree’s nutrients and water, remove those that have grown up from the ground before making any other pruning cuts. Trim them with pruning shears as deeply as you can below the soil line. Root suckers can be removed at any point during the growing season.

Then remove all branches that grow straight up, particularly the thin and frail ones at the top. You don’t want the interior of your martini-glass form crowded with them.

The rule I use: a bird should be able to fly straight through your olive tree. If a bird couldn’t make it through because the middle is packed with vertical shoots, you haven’t thinned enough.

Step 5: Chop Off Any Dead Branches and Wood

Branches on olive trees grow throughout the year, so keep an eye on your olive tree and cut off any branches that are unhealthy, damaged, or dead. It’s important to prevent diseases from spreading further, destroying the olive tree, or infecting other plants. Cutting off and discarding all the affected growth can help it bounce back to its former glory.

Simply reduce the size of healthy wood by at least 6 inches (15 cm) when cutting back into dead wood.

Also remove branches that are touching or crossing each other. Avoiding any crossing or rubbing is beneficial for healthy olive tree growth, with sunlight reaching all the branches and no wounds forming where branches rub. Cutting crossing branches provides air circulation, which also helps you protect it from pests and parasites. Just trim off the top 1/4 inch (0.6 cm) of these branches.

How To Prune Olive Trees Correctly: The Right Cutting Technique

When pruning an olive tree, make clean cuts at a 45-degree angle. Avoid tearing the bark or making jagged cuts. To avoid damaging the main stalk, it’s important that any cuts you make have a minimum 45-degree angle.

There’s one more distinction that matters more than almost anything else, and most guides skip it:

• Thinning cuts remove an entire branch back to its point of origin. This opens the canopy and is what you want on an olive tree.
• Heading cuts shorten a branch partway, leaving a stub. The tree responds by pushing a cluster of tall, vertical, non-fruiting shoots right where you cut.

Heading cuts are how a tree that got “tidied up” ends up denser and less productive the following year. Thin, don’t head.

A few more technique notes:

• Cut just outside the branch collar — the slightly swollen ring where the branch meets the trunk. That’s where the tree’s own healing tissue lives.
• On branches thick enough to tear, make an undercut first, then cut from the top. Otherwise the weight of the branch strips bark down the trunk as it falls.
• Don’t paint or seal the wounds. Olive trees compartmentalize cuts on their own, and sealants trap moisture.

Hard Pruning Olive Trees: Rejuvenating an Old or Neglected Tree

Surprisingly, olive trees can withstand heavy chopping. Hard pruning may appear harsh, but it is occasionally required to revive an old, injured, or uncared-for tree. If necessary, 50–75% of the tree can be safely removed — but always leave enough foliage for the tree to continue photosynthesis and thrive.

Hard pruning is the right call when:

• The tree hasn’t been touched in a decade and has become a solid green ball with no light in the middle.
• It’s grown far beyond a workable height. Left alone, olive trees can grow well past comfortable harvesting range.
• Fruit is only setting on the outer 30 cm of the canopy.
• Frost or storm damage has wrecked the framework.

My advice: stage it over three years rather than doing it all at once.

• Year 1 — Take out the dead wood, the suckers, and one of the oldest main branches. Nothing else.
• Year 2 — Open the center. Remove a second old main branch and thin the verticals that shot up in response to Year 1.
• Year 3 — Re-establish the martini glass on the new framework and get back to normal annual maintenance.

Expect little to no fruit for a season or two after a hard prune. That’s normal — the tree is spending everything on rebuilding wood.

After any hard prune, water it well through the following growing season. A tree rebuilding a canopy has a much bigger water demand than one just ticking over.

How To Prune a Potted Olive Tree

Potted olive trees need a mild trim once a year rather than harsh pruning every two years. The goal in a container is different: you’re restricting size and keeping the shape, not maximizing fruit.

• Tip-prune the main branches each spring, cutting back to a good replacement shoot.
• Thin the interior so light reaches the middle, exactly as you would on a grove tree.
• Remove suckers the moment you see them — a pot’s limited nutrients get drained fast.
• Keep the canopy roughly proportional to the pot. A top-heavy potted olive blows over.

If you’re constantly fighting the size, the problem might be the variety rather than your pruning. Dwarf olive tree varieties stay naturally compact and save you a lot of work.

Pruning and root health go together in a container, so if the tree is rootbound it’s worth checking whether you should repot it in the same season. And if you enjoy the shaping side of it, olives take beautifully to being trained as an olive bonsai.

How To Trim an Olive Tree at Every Age

How you trim an olive tree changes a lot depending on how old it is. Understanding the life cycle of an olive tree makes the reasoning obvious.

Years 1–2 (establishment): Don’t prune at all, beyond removing anything dead or broken. The tree needs every leaf it has to build a root system.

Years 3–5 (formative): This is where you build the martini glass. Select and keep your three or four lateral framework branches, remove competing leaders, and take off suckers. Don’t expect or chase fruit yet.

Years 6–15 (productive): Annual light maintenance. Thin for light, remove exhausted fruiting wood, keep the suckers down. Roughly 10–20% of the canopy per year is plenty.

Year 15+ (mature): Same annual maintenance, plus rotational renewal — take out one older main branch every few years and let a younger one take over. This is what keeps a century-old tree productive instead of hollow.

5 Olive Tree Pruning Mistakes To Avoid

1. Pruning too early or too late in the season. Cuts made before a frost don’t heal — they die back.
2. Making heading cuts instead of thinning cuts. You’ll get a thicket of vertical shoots and less fruit.
3. Taking too much in one go. Removing more than 25–30% in a normal maintenance year stresses the tree into pushing suckers instead of fruit.
4. Using dirty or blunt tools. Blunt blades crush rather than cut, and crushed tissue is where disease gets in.
5. Ignoring the suckers. They’re easy to dismiss as cosmetic, but they’re quietly drinking the water and nutrients your fruit needs.

What To Do With Olive Tree Prunings

Don’t just bin them. There’s more value in a pile of olive prunings than most people realize.

The healthy, pencil-thick semi-hardwood pieces are exactly what you need if you want to propagate olive trees from cuttings — free trees from wood you were about to throw away.

The larger branches have plenty of uses too, and I’ve collected the practical ones in this guide to ways to use olive branches. Even the olive leaves have their own uses, from tea to mulch.

The one thing you should never do is compost or leave prunings from a diseased branch anywhere near the grove. Burn those or take them off-site.

Frequent Asked Questions About How to Prune Olive Trees

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