Year 2024 was my first time to experience the Cicada invasion, at least while I was interested in growing fruit/hazelnuts. As I would see a few around my trees I was totally unaware of the condition they would leave my trees/vines in. One of the main observations I noticed was their preference for certain limb diameters. Approximate pencil size was where most of my damage occurred. Some of the hazel limbs were damaged beyond the tree’s ability to quickly heal on their own. I plan to prune out the worst looking ones this winter. Hazels are hardy and I expect them to grow well this year. Another area I had a short time issue with was new grafts. I’ve started adding a few new varieties via grafts each year with hopes of eventually improving pollinating the flowers. I added about 4 scions of Eta and 3 of them started growing early as I expected. Then along came the Cicada and these three were damaged so bad they didn’t survive. Ironically the one that delayed emerging escaped being damaged. I had a couple of leftover scions refrigerated so I grafted those as I saw the Cicada winding down. These were grafted a little later than I prefer but they both survived and grew about 18”. It all worked out and I was able to get another variety started. Through a swap from a generous member I have two more varieties I intend to add this year. Thank goodness for good labels or I would never be able to keep up with all the grafts. I currently have about 8 trees growing and have hopes of actually getting a decent harvest as the trees get older. I would love to hear how 2024 went for you and your plans for 2025.
One summer, I had only one cicada. I would hear him/her chirp! I then looked at the bark of my white peach, which it loved. The bark looked as if a tank had run up it. I saved the tree.
We were fortunate in Michigan to have very low cicada numbers. I saw one.
Cicada ripped up my trees a few years ago. Oddly they really didn’t touch the hazels though. They seem to favor stone fruits. I didn’t prune the damage hoping they would heal over. They didn’t and you can still see evidence now. I grafted over to new varieties on some of them and that corrected the problem on those. At least they won’t be back for a while.
no cicada this far north. hopefully it stays that way.
I was always told that cicadas don’t eat anything or cause any damage 
did everyone on Facebook lie to me? Lol
Here so far they have not damaged any of our plants that I have noticed, yet here their exoskeletons are found on plants all over our yard @Melon
We have five hazelnuts we got from Stark brothers last year:
Lewis, Clark, Ennis, Casina and Hall’s Giant.
Interestingly, all have catkins except Casina.
Lewis, Clark and Ennis have many elongated catkins that are releasing pollen and Hall’s Giant has a few catkins that are still compacted.
I do see a lot of buds and some of these look like flowers with the red tips.
Right now, they are getting lightly snowed on after a considerable long warmer climate due to La Niña. I’m not worried about it because it’s above freezing out there so likely it will dissipate. I might try to move them if think they’re gonna get pummeled and frozen although I’m not sure what the point would be because they’re going to be in the ground at some point and will have to deal with whatever weather throws at them.
Edit to add:
I just went to look and all five of our hazelnut trees have buds that have spiky red threads coming out of the tip so if those are flowers, then we lucked out and all five of our hazels will have flowers this year.
Yes you have flowers. For me the difficulty is getting enough pollen spread around the flowers.
Female hazelnut flowers are the ones with red, and the elongated catkins are of course the male flowers.
Can someone post a photo of their not yet woken up or slowly waking up hazelnut tips and female/male parts?
I just stepped on something really hard out back and it was red tipped too. Was a fallen branch.
Wondering if i have a random hazelnut somewhere is all
Hazelnuts never truly go dormant here, yes they loose their leaves, yet they constantly have male flowers when the leaves are gone.
i don’t wanna go outside so i took a photo from inside
my hazels are all alive after winter, I’m very glad. no photos but they are limber and seem happy still dormant.
my hazels all survived the winter. I’ve noticed a lot of female flowers, but only a couple even have catkins on them.
Having the same problem. I’m grafting in different varieties each year hoping to get more catkins.
First year flowering, but Truxton I got from Z’s was loaded with catkins. My other varieties had some, but none as dense as Truxton. Keep in mind too that all of my other hazels are larger plants. Id say The Beast was second as far as catkins go.
We’ll see how many nuts set, and how many I can beat the squirels to.
I only ever seem to have one plant with catkins at a time. Two years ago I had a single cluster on Jefferson and none on my other hazels, since then it hasn’t produced any more but now Tonda di Giffoni is filled with them. I tied some catkins from an American hazel onto it, but they only ever expanded partway. The female flowers started to open two weeks ago. I hope I haven’t missed my chance to pollinate Tonda di Giffoni—it produces the best nuts.
I don’t know what I’m going to do with all these seedlings. I just counted 20 and I’m sure more will be emerging soon. These nuts came off of an American hazel and I only have one. To my knowledge there are no other hazel plants around other than my varieties of hybrids. I’m assuming that hazels require another variety to pollinate them. Is it a stretch to think these seedling are all hybrids?
