In the pic of there are the 2 trees with very different phenotypes. On the left is the anomaly in the row, with different foliage and a ‘gracillimus’ upright sparse form. Is this from the turkish species?
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I was not aware that Grimo’s Carmela was so precocious! Bare root this year. Musta been pollinated in Canada at their orchard.
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Squirlz are all over mine now. I put out a bunch of traps but they like the unripe hazels more than walnuts, pecans, corn, peanuts, or sunflowers.
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I hear they get their water from them and can gorge until the fat content increases and its harder to digest the quantities.
Here’s my farm hand. Need a big holster for my tractor.
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I picked all of my filberts Aug. 24. The chipmunks probably managed to take more than 1/2 of them. Squirrel pressure was light this year. There were quite few clusters of 4 - 6 nuts, which I would assume to be hybrid traits. My Mark Shepard american type hybrids are not ripe yet. I could probably pick one or two bushes (and should) but most seem to need a while still. I generally use the point at which they readily detach from the involucre as the sign of being ready.
A friend is ordering up some nuts from the Rutgers breeding program. They apparently sell them by the lb. He said offhand that these random filbert type hybrid seedlings that I happened upon make nuts bigger than nearly any produced by that program. I wonder if theres any chance these might have originated with John Gordon. A friend was scoping out the hazels there semi-recently and sent me pics of some massive filbert type nuts. Funny thing is I know the lady who planted the parent trees, and she (maybe I oughtn’t be surprised) has no recollection of the trees let alone where she might have purchased them.
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I am growing Hazels in Texas. Gets really hot here of course and I don’t expect to get a lot per tree but with a lot of trees hoping for a decent harvest. For anybody else nutty enough to try this in hot environments some handle the heat better than others. The best here have been Polly O, Dorris, The Beast and Hunterdon and maybe Somerset. Southern sourced wild Corylus Americana’s work here just fine handling the heat. Some northern sourced American hazels work but not all. Ecos does poorly here, Select One has done well. Winkler seems to be doing good. Catkin death is an issue on some European types. Barcelona grows OK here but suffers in the heat. Its catkins don’t survive the cold and wind very well. Yamhill catkins seem to grow fine here and the plant handles the heat fairly well. Jefferson, Felix, York do not like the heat and don’t grow well. Theta seems to do OK. Grand Traverse suffers in the heat, drops a lot of leaves and flushes back out. Some Precocious does well here but it is not a cultivar, but a collection of plants. Two of four were not good. One had micro nuts, one doesn’t produce, but my other two produce some good size nuts and the catkins mostly survive. The Precocious that produce larger nuts have kernel weights of about .7 grams compared to 1.6 grams for Barcelona. Select One produces the largest nuts for an American with kernel weights of about .5 grams. My wild American nuts have kernels coming in at .2 grams. Barcelona does not produce a lot of nuts here, I get a handful. However my summers here vary dramatically in heat so might be better in milder (by Texas standards) summers which the last two were definitely not. So I have a bunch of Americans for pollen purposes along with Yamhill. The other OSU and Rutgers plants are too small yet to produce so can’t say if I will get nuts. As I said, I will never get full production like optimal area but with lots of trees hope for a good harvest all together. They all survive though, but some seem more tolerant of the heat than others. Going to be maybe two years or so to see if the OSU and Rutgers will produce nuts. I think some will as many are related to Barcelona and that does produce some even though it struggles in the heat.
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Got a bit more out of the nut harvest this year. Below are some pic of representative nuts. Most I would say ripened ~ the last week of August here with the Oikos hybrid being a bit later. It was the last to flower as well.
I would also say that Kens Select was the most prolific, accounting for ~ 1/2 of the harvest.
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Here are my 1st hazelnuts, open pollinated americana, heterophylla (asian) and colurna (turkish) 4th yr., from seed. Pollination was sporatic with my best per plant yield from farrisx , 3-4 withbsome persisting still on tree, and the prodigy with 7, all released at once, 2 weeks ago.
My clonal Aldara had a few, but were lost. I was late.
Still waiting on Rutgers’
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Ferris is a fatty nut, isn’t it! 
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I like the striping. Very attractive nut.
I have seen a tomato worm like beast on 4 occasions enjoying the foliage on hazelnut trees.
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Was inspecting a smaller tree with a ton of smaller catkins when zi spotted a dropped husk. Nut intact. Searched and found a few more nice and hidden so I picked them all. Looks like an open pollinated triple hybrid…
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This is the first video that I have seen that shows the size of different varieties. Theta is the only variety I have that wasn’t shown that I grow. I would think Theta would be much smaller and mostly used as a pollinator.
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I’m maxed out of space so if I add another variety it is done with grafting. I think these grafted varieties will help with pollination.
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Theta Ive seen used in ochard designs for pollination in Oregon. Im thinking of doing some grafting onto random hybrids or even The Beast as a vigorous standard. Take a multi stemmed hazel and graft, switching the southern facing stem. Auburn, you mightnwant to consider Somerset if you don’t have it already. Southern Spain sourced genetics, is completely immune to Efb and could contribute some good genes to any seed you want to plant down in EFB country.
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I currently have Jefferson, York, Theta, and Yamhill. I also have one from Tractor Supply I planted for additional pollen support (looks American). I have grafted these around in my trees. For me with limited space grafting appears to be the way to go. They graft pretty easy with a simple cleft.
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I might graft in a few more varieties. These selections will be for additional pollen, size, and disease resistance.
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Thanks
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