Has anyone done this? These are for wildlife, so I’m not concerned with the variety. I’m planning to try it this winter, I can find very little information on this. Most information I have found is geared toward other methods of propagation or toward keeping the nuts all winter and direct seeding them in the spring. With this approach, cold is used for both stratification and delaying germination until spring.
Does anyone know for sure the minimum amount of cold stratification required to get good germination?
If anyone has tried starting them indoors under lights, I’d love to hear how things worked for you.
Oikos says that 90-120 days of stratification is used. Otherwise I’d say contact a local nursery that specializes in natives and ask them (if they sell them that is). Hazelnuts are on my list for next year.
I set aside some native hazelnuts whenever I harvested them (roughly a couple months ago), thinking of using them for seed, but they’ve been in an open container in the house ever since, so I’m sure they’ve dried out. Will they still grow after drying out? Or do they need to be kept moist from the time of harvest in order to get them to germinate?
I have read the 90-120 days. I was hoping someone had some hands-on with them. The reading I’ve done says they are sensitive to drying out and need to be well hydrated. I’ll try to report back and let folks know what I ended up doing and how well it worked.
I talked to a guy in the same town as my alma mater last year and he runs a native nursery. I’ll contact him and get the skinny. I’d assume that they are similar to other nuts (e.g chestnuts or acorns). I haven’t seen anything about scarifying them. I figure that I’ll find it on here or qdma
Yes, I think they do. You can do a float test, and those that float aren’t good for seed.
That I’m not sure about, I assume that it would depend on what species of corylus (hazelnut) it is. I’ve never looked into the compatibility between the different species.
Some acorn don’t require stratification. DCOs don’t, but they evidently respond to vernalization. I’m trying that with both DCOs and ACs this year. I have been told that hazelnuts have a hard shell and so better with scarification, but again, the information I’ve found on these is thin,
Well, my hazelnuts have been cold stratifying for 100 days now. Yesterday, I took them out of the cold and soaked them in water for a couple hours. I then put them back in the ziplock bags with the damp long-fiber sphagnum and placed the bags in my indoor grow box under lights at 70+ degrees.
My plan is to leave them out for a few days and see if I get any root radicles. After 5 days any that don’t show radicles will go back into cold stratification for a bit longer.
Thank you, misoo83, for sharing that video. I might try doing that. I have one Red Fortin, one Theta, and five Winkler hazelnut trees. The Winklers are doing well, but the other two are still scrawny after two years.
Someone, maybe tshaun, had written to ask me where I bought the Winklers. I was looking through my notes today and see I told him wrong. I got them from Burnt Ridge Nursery.
Just to follow up on my previous post, I ended up with quite a few nice seedlings. I transplanted them from 18s where the tap root was pruned to 1 gal Rootbuilder II containers and then again to 3 gal RB2 containers in late spring. I planted them in the filed in November. I’ll have to take some pictures next spring when they leaf out.
Yours look great. I’ve just noticed this thread, and I have some wintering in the porch. I did like you, 120 wet in the fridge, then pot and wait to see if they came up…they did. I have a few more waiting in the fridge from the fall just past. Re, beaked hazel with tame hazel, yes, with heterphylla hazel, and the hybrid Ok with tame hazel. It matters that the beaked is female parent, and I don’t know why. I have a het3, heterophylla crossed avelanna, and I don’t know yet if the beaked will make nuts with it… current beaked is a first year seedling. A turkish crossed european will provide pollen that het3 will set nuts from. However, the het3 did not set nuts on the turkish cross.
