jesse do you cut back the suckers on yours or let them grow into a hedge?
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So far, I have just let them grow, they mostly suckered from the crown and I plan to use the new shoots to replace the older ones.
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mine keep getting whole branches that just mysteriously die all at once. very weird. doesn’t affect the rest of the bush but then lots of suckers come up. ill let them grow out instead of cutting them all. i get good sized nuts on mine . not sure if these are blight immune. think they’re pure americans. i want to get some hybrids someday.
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I had a bit of dieback on a couple of my older bushes, and a few catkins looked like they got frosted out, kind of mysterious given our mild winter.
A neat article on growing them in Maine-
http://www.mofga.org/Publications/MaineOrganicFarmerGardener/Fall2012/Hazelnuts/tabid/2279/Default.aspx
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yep. and it happens this time of year. whole branch will brown out like sprayed with round up but rest of the plant is doing great. no signs of disease or damage either. it only happens on my 2 older ones. i only give them a few shovels of compost in early spring. thanks for the link!
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@JesseS,
Think we should figure out how to graft the small ones over to something better like these NCGR-Corvallis: Corylus Catalog. I have some bushes that are pretty old I planted but the nuts are all hollow! I wanted to do it this year but I really had a crazy year How difficult is it to graft hazelnuts? . Got busy with grafting everything else. Take a look at the cultivars Barcelona and Jefferson!
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Do you have Eastern Filbert Blight in your area? If so, I would avoid Barcelona. Jefferson and some of the other OSU releases are supposedly mostly immune but they may not be 100% immune.
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Not yet but I would still want to plant resistant bushes. Thanks for that information.
eastern filbert blight is across most of the country at this point. the disease cant take up to 10 years to show up on bushes. Its a pretty serious disease that we can avoid by planting resistant bushes. I think its better to not waste time on shrubs that will die. I have seen friends make that mistake and its depressing. If you’re going to plant the oregon cultivars, at least plant some of the american hybrids too so that you’ll have hazels in the long term.
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How do you process or crack that volume of nuts? I’m considering an order to Oikos and trying to decide if it would be worth it. I pi ked two quarts (husked) of wild hazels many years ago and ended up not eating most because of the small size (hand cracking). Sue
A hand cranked cracker with a rotating drum, hopper is the best way to go, I am still hand cracking but in the next couple years I might need to invest. Can’t remember the brand name… A friend has one of these and says it works good, still have to pick the meat out though.
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This might be obvious (I’m new, I don’t know) but I have two-for-two Hazel grafting so far and I’m betting that the reason is because I grafted onto what could be called water sprouts…but these were mini-pollard creations from the year before. The basics = I cut a bunch of 1"- 2" stems at about 4ft tall simply to open up the canopy around a ‘rescue’ apple tree that was among many wild Hazel trees/bushes. The next mid-Spring I saw that there were a couple very vigorous shoots on the sides of many of the cut stems. I used these to graft to because they seemed to not be as tough and sinewy as normal branches. I grafted scions from a Tonda di Giffoni and an OSU Dorris and they both worked well.
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Can you share the technique and timing you followed grafting hazels?
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Since we have a lot of blight in our wild hazels I plan to buy disease resist stock for now. But grafting would be interesting in the future on their suckrts or seedlings. Sue
My concern of grafting high on wild root stock would be blight killing the rootstock.
If the scion wood is blight resistant , I would think it would be better off to root that as a cutting , layering, or graft Union buried , so that the whole new plant is resistant,
If grafted onto a wild seedling of unknown resistance , blight could kill the rootstock and you have lost it.
I "had " an incredible planting of filbert / hazel cross, I gathered seed from the infamous "Etter " nut orchard (with John Gordan ! )in Pa.
Planted them on the farm here , 5yr started Bering , 10 yrs , of heavy production, some 15 ft. Tall ,beautiful , though much variation then … Then the blight.came…within 5 yrs or so it killed them “all”.
I was , and still am really bummed about it.
So hopefully this info may save some of you about 20 yrs.!!!
These trees had a mostly European “look” to them, of unknown ancestry
As Mr Etter had past befor I got a chance to visit.
Now I am starting some of the new blight resistant ? Ones. Starting over again .
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Has anyone been to the Etter orchard lately ,as I have not been there in years,…just wondering what condition it is in ?
I used a simple whip graft, and I cut off most of the leaves from the two recipient shoots. According to my dated photos I must have done the grafting in early April…the important part being that the shoots were new and vigorous and putting out small leaves. I guess now would be the time to chop some major stems so they will put up some vigorous shoots to use. Also, I grafted on top of 4ft long shoots…shorter seems like it would be better. Though I wrapped them with Parafilm, I tied them pretty hard with the green (nylon?) ribbon, too.
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I to love these nuts. A friend has great supply an dose not use so its free game for me! I ate so manny last year. Amazing harvest tho jesse!!!
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That is correct, where I grew up (zone 5, Moscow, Russia) we had wild hazels growing around everywhere, we didn’t even bother to plant them - only picked from what was growing around. They were smaller than what you can buy in store, but delicious. They also made nice privacy screen, so usually they were growing outside the chain fence. They also made perfect, fast growing material for garden trellis - long, strait, smooth. I miss the time when when you needed a pole, you just step outside your yard and get one on the street 
. Now I need to drive to store to get fancy bamboo .
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Hazelnuts are my favorites second to the elusive black walnut. I bring back fresh hazelnuts I buy in the supermarket or outdoor market every time I am in France.
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