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The objective of this study was to evaluate primocane cane training and propagation techniques for the production of long-cane blackberry (Rubus spp.) plants. Seventeen to 29 6-ft-long canes were produced from each semierect ‘Triple Crown’ and trailing ‘Siskiyou’ blackberry plant grown on the rotating cross-arm (RCA) trellis and cane training system. By early August, the lateral canes had grown beyond the top wire ≈6 ft above the ground and continued growing downward to the ground. The tips of the lateral canes reached the soil level from mid-August to mid-September at which time they were placed in 1/2-gal pots containing peat-based media. In early Oct. 2009, the tip-rooted lateral canes were cut from the stock plant at the uppermost trellis wire. Among the long-cane plants produced in 2009, 76% of buds in ‘Siskiyou’ broke, but less than 30% of buds in ‘Triple Crown’ broke in a heated greenhouse. Flowering occurred in 15% of the shoots that developed on rooted ‘Siskiyou’ long canes, but the shoots on the long-cane plants of ‘Triple Crown' were morphologically vegetative and flowering did not occur. In 2010–11, the long-cane plants were detached from the stock plants in December, January, and March. The numbers of nodes with a flowering shoot improved to 41% and 16% and the number of flowers per shoot increased to two and five flowers on long-cane plants of ‘Siskiyou’ and ‘Triple Crown’ blackberry, respectively.

The determination of nutrient removal from olive orchards could be of interest to estimate tree consumption and to provide information about the amount of nutrients to be applied when leaf analysis indicates the need for fertilization. In this work, nutrient removal from yield and pruning was determined from the control plots of two olive orchards located in different locations, in which two long-term experiments dealing with nitrogen fertilization were conducted. The trees from these plots received only potassium fertilizers during the 7 years of the experiments, because the previous season’s leaf analysis showed that the other nutrients were always above the threshold of sufficiency. Potassium was the most abundant element in the harvested fruits with an average of 4.42 g·kg⁻¹ fresh fruit, which represents more than 50% of the mineral composition of the olive fruit, whereas calcium was the more abundant element in the pruning material with an average of 12.0 g·kg⁻¹ and 6.87 g·kg⁻¹, depending on the location, which represents more than 50% of the mineral composition of the pruning material. Nitrogen was the second more abundant element in both fruits (2.87 g·kg⁻¹) and pruning material (6.87 and 5.40 g·kg⁻¹, depending on the location), representing ≈35% of the mineral composition of both fruit and pruning material. The other nutrients were removed only in very small amounts. Expressed per hectare, the amounts of nutrients removed annually were: 57.9 kg·ha⁻¹ per year calcium (Ca), 54.4 kg·ha⁻¹ per year nitrogen (N), 45.5 kg·ha⁻¹ per year potassium (K), 6.87 kg·ha⁻¹ per year phosphorus (P), 3.79 kg·ha⁻¹ per year magnesium (Mg), 0.12 kg·ha⁻¹ per year copper (Cu), 0.11 kg·ha⁻¹ per year boron (B), 0.08 kg·ha⁻¹ per year manganese, and 0.05 kg·ha⁻¹ per year zinc (Zn). These data show that olive trees remove small amounts of nutrients and, therefore, the need for fertilization is relatively low.