Did the harvest wind up being pretty good?
One bush ripened earlier than the others and I picked those. The rest needed a little longer we thought. Mom went out to pick them the following weekend and they were all gone! We think the squirrels got them. Probably have about fifty nuts to eat this year, but the majority got taken by critters. A bummer, but we will see what we can do next year to harvest more of them.
2 Likes
I am looking at a very nice harvest from my bushes this year. Some are bent right to the ground under the weight of their crop! The first ones are now ripe, and I am picking them today. Lucky to beat the rodents!
5 Likes
My bushes set only lightly last year, plus we had a crazy squirrel plague, so no nuts…2019 is helping make up for it!
16 Likes
This gives me hope! Mine are 3 years old and I am very impatient. But you just can’t rush Nature…Very nice haul Jesse…
1 Like
Nice harvest. My trees are in their third year and have a lot of catkins. I should get a few next year.
2 Likes
Nice. I’ll only have a dozen or so this year, but the limbs they’re on are still bent very low. Was wondering when they should be harvested. They look very similar to the ones in your photos, and I’m a zone+ ahead of you looks like. So I assume they should be harvested about “now”. Thanks.
3 Likes
nice haul Jesse. mine had weird deformed husks that had no nut in it. never seen them do that before. the rest of the bush grew fine. got my 5 from arbor day 5 yrs ago.
1 Like
Mine are dropping now, but many are not brown and many are a lot smaller than the store bought ones. I guess I should be happy that I am at least getting some, the squirrels cleared them out every other year. The bushes are now 8 years old and they must be at least 20’ tall…
EDIT: I decided I should pick up the drops, thought there were only a few but I picked up 10 lbs! A few are normal size but most are smaller than the commercial ones, more like chick-pea sized. These are various blight-resistant varieties which I had heard were smaller and indeed that seems to be the case.
3 Likes
My Ashworth hazelberts seem to ripen earlier than the other two sources’ (Badgerset and Oikos). The vushes themselves are pretty variable, the one I showed above all came from the individual bearing the largest nuts, also the most upright grower, I guess thats the euro genetics showing. Some of the smaller nut bearing individuals may be more productive on a poundage basis.
2 Likes
@JesseS will you be getting any american hazelnut harvest this year? I’d be interested in seeing how they compare with the hazelberts. Also, where did you get the ashworth from? I planted about 75 american last year including several winkler from oikos and wonder if i shouldnt add some more variety. Alot i plan on letting feed the deer if they end up too small to be worth picking.
2 Likes
I havent planted american hazel here. I got Ashworth from St Lawrnce nursery. I have some seedlings from my plants if you are looking for another source.
2 Likes
Im interested in planting a few next spring, it looks like the nuts are bigger than what most of my american variety will end up being, plus variety is always good. How much do you sell your seedlings for? So far do your plants seem pretty disease resistant?
1 Like
Please pm me for details if you are interested in a purshase. I have not noticed any disease affecting these, there has some minor catkin damage, as well as a few nuts bored out and eaten by grubs, both of those are caused by insects.
1 Like
Since everyone here is talking about hazelnut, I have some questions. hazelnut grow a lot of sucks, do you let sucks grow, or dig them up?
3 Likes
I let all my hazelnuts grow in big clumps! Normally we pick them sooner but my mom is working on picking them later today. They have a good flavor.
12 Likes
Here is my harvest after I washed and dried them (just did them in my fruit dryer as I had it out already):
They are very tasty, I am enjoying snacking on them. I have around five varieties and I need to figure out which is which – one has nuts more heart-shaped and those seem to be much more prone to rot. Or it could be that they dropped longer ago so have been sitting on the ground longer.
The nuts are small but they fill more of the shell than the standard hazelnut so they are bigger than I had expected.
Anyway these look like a winner with these blight-resistant varieties, they have been zero work other than harvest.
EDIT: I went and looked and there are still Hazelnuts on all the trees left to fall. The one that is more heart-shaped also looks worse on the tree so it is not just ground rotting. It is Santiam. Yamhill, Jefferson, and Theta are all relatively similar, the nuts when opened don’t have the hairs on them like Santiam and they are not as prone to rot. Since I have them all in a hedge I will probably just remove Santiam and let the others fill in.
Here is an article on Santiam where it had a moldy kernel problem in one year… sounds like lots of fall rains not good for it. Since we get a lot of that I would X Santiam off your list if you are in the east or midwest.
11 Likes
Depends on if you want it in tree form (like european/west coast hazelnut orchards) then you prune off all suckers if you want s bush/hedge you let them sucker and prune out older canes as they get older
1 Like
Your good results is what I was hoping for when I planted my three trees. My location is warmer but going into my third year they have also been trouble free. I was hoping that the Jefferson would have a larger nut size but apparently they are all similar in size. My three recent Jefferson air layer plantings will give me a total of six. Once established looks like most of our efforts is getting the nuts harvested before they mold or squirrels help us. Thanks for the update.
4 Likes