Yes, I have 3 OSU hazelnuts bushes 2 Theta and 1 Eta. I also had a Jefferson (also OSU) and it died. I bought a second Theta by accident, planted it before I realized, now we have no room for a Jefferson. Who knows maybe some day I could graft some Jefferson on to one of the Theta, yet they are growing way faster than I though they would, at first they start out very slow and in time they grow very fast, like a weed. Anyway, Jefferson is the one that I wanted the most.
A person who knows a lot about breading new plants, sounds like he might try and teach me, yet I am not going to get my hopes up just in case. He was very vague, and I might have misunderstood.
Utah Giant sounds great, yet I have not tried it, and climate can make a variety not so desirable, it’s not self-fertile, and it’s fruit cracks a lot in a wrong climate). I hope you have luck with it.
Here some years we have huge mite problems, yet I try spraying before they could show up, it helps. Around here slugs can be just as much a problem and they will eat just about anything plant that is still delicate. We temporarily gave up growing a lot of things because of them, cauliflower, cabbage, spinach and so on. One thing that I have learned the hard way is to know what will show up and destroy crops, and sometimes whole plants, and start spraying before they’d show up. Prevention is much easier, although still does not get of all of them.
Every year I wish it would come sooner. In part so I know that the chances of cold damage are gone, a relief. Also so that I could eat the fruit, or see them get closer to production. I also love making Jam. We’ve had enough figs and peaches to do that. Once we have higher production I will start making other things with them too. Like fruit breads, and cakes. Maybe even candies. Like I bought some pomegranate salt water taffy, they make them with Pomegranate Juice, yet lower quality pomegranate juice than what I squeeze myself from store bought pomegranates, the pomegranate juice from our future own fruit will be even better. I don’t see myself making Salt Water taffy, due to the special equipment I’d need. Yet there are plenty of other kinds of candy out there.
Each year our fig trees have better fruit than the year before under the same conditions, last year was not the most ideal year for fig production, so the overall fruit quality was less with some of the fig trees, like when it rained a lot for days, or weeks, after a long dry spell last year was better than the years before, under the same conditions.