If you press a fingernail into the tissue of a young olive at McEvoy Ranch, you can feel a transformation. It’s called pit hardening, a mid-summer phase of development when the cells surrounding the seed turn into a hard, woody shell. That’s a sign that the fruit will soon start accumulating oil. The olives are still green and small, no larger than the tip of a pinkie finger, but they’re a few weeks ahead of schedule due to April’s heat wave. A cool summer is helping slow their growth. Unlike sugar-based fruits like grapes or peaches, olives aren’t at risk of being snatched by birds, said president Samantha Dorsey. Not yet ripe, “They taste awful,” she said. “They’re so bitter.”
Faced with forecasts of a big El Nino, an Inverness grower of legal cannabis is hastening his harvest. If heavy rain arrives as early as October, there’s a risk of mold. So the grower, who wished to remain unnamed, is trying to speed things along. To trigger early flowering, he has turned off extra lights and is feeding the plants special nutrients like potassium and phosphorus. Aiming for the farm’s first-ever September harvest, “I sacrifice a few inches in size, but the tradeoff is cleaner medicine and fewer pathogens,” he said.