violets'n'vanilla

Thanks for that Omo, I have been reading about the cork oak trees, interesting, someone should harvest and send 'real cork' to Harrods, they are into using the real stuff for their speciality wines, don't you know. As you do...

So the 'trees too close to the house problem', sorted, thank you.

omostra06

i think portugal supplies something like 60% of the worlds wine bottle cork. we have a huge old cork tree at the bottom of our land. it must be 200 years old

violets'n'vanilla

That is quite amazing ~ and if your tree could talk ~


Do you have to have a specialist come in to strip the cork from time to time?

omostra06

you do if you want to harvest the cork, every so many years, we dont want to remove it as it would spoli the look of a great old tree.

pureportugal

when the bark is stripped from cork oaks (every 10 yrs) the exposed trunk is a deep red (ochre?) colour - quite amazing!

i don't know about plots in the algarve, but in our area (central) most plots are not cleared before they are sold, so you will almost always inherit fruit trees, olive trees, and often also grapevines.

we have lots of peach trees and they do very well. we also have fig, orange, lemon, nectarine, loquat, persimon, pomegranite, apricot, apple, pear, quince and probably some others i can't think of right now! most of them were already on the land when we bought it. our neighbour has bananas - but they have to be protected in the winter as we do get frost here.

carey

hi,i moved here 2 months ago and im in the process of buying a plot of land with approx 500 mature grapevines on the land.does anyone know if they are worth anything and if so how do i get rid of them?

pureportugal

do you really want to get rid of them? you could make a LOT of wine with 500 vines

not sure how much they'd be worth, young vines sell for about a euro each. mature ones may be difficult to get rid of without grubbing out their very deep roots, otherwise they'll just keep growing back.

carey

oh my god alcholics anonymous here i come!!! joking aside,i have too dig them up because im building a house on the land.so if their is anyone who wants too buy them within the next two months,let me know.thanks

TouristTrap

Paradise

dragonwood

Hi I'm a new member to the site and we could do with some help locating garden centres and builders' merchants/DIY places in the Ansiao area where we have our house. Would anyone out there be able to advise please? Thanks

omostra06

hi dragonwood welcome to the forum
not sure about ansiao as were a little south of you at Tomar but iam sure there will be some around your area as there are loads of builders merchants here in Tomar and iam sure it will be the same up there, maybe ask the locals.
There is a bricolage (B&Q type place) in Abrantes if you get stuck.

dragonwood

Hi Omostra - many thanks for your quick reply - I will scout around now.

Best regards

snowbunny

could the tree in question be in the Araucaria family, as is the Norfolk pine?

Is the tree a conifer? What are the leaves like?