Catkins are flowers. You should get nuts about the first growing season after catkins form and go through winter- five years sounds about right, although I think they can bare a year sooner.

15 feet is about typical orchard spacing. Catkins in late winter, falling nuts in early autumn is the seasonal timing.

We have lots of wild hazelnut trees on our property. I've seen the nuts forming, but in 4 years I have yet to get one before the squirrels strip them.

I might have seen some nuts on one of them but when I went back what ever I saw was gone. What do they look like on the plant? Do they have a husk?

Maybe I will be caging them up next year.

"Catkins are flowers. You should get nuts about the first growing season after catkins form and go through winter- five years sounds about right, although I think they can bare a year sooner."

I read somewhere that the male plant has a small, almost non-descript flower on it that grows directly on the bark.

The catkins are the male flowers. The female flowers are tiny red 'shaving brushes' which you need to look very closely to see at all. Both male and female flowers are found on the same tree but the females need pollen from another tree to be fertilised.

I suggest you Google some images of catkins, female flowers and nuts so you can recognise them. Round here the nuts are falling right now. I picked up some from the pavement on my walk home yesterday. They were from an ornamental red leaved bush in hanging over someone's garden wall. Tasted fine but not quite as sweet as the wild hazels.

Thanks for the botany lesson Flora. I knew the ovules were separate from the catkins but didn't realize they were a kind of flower. Are they?

Squirrels will make the nuts disappear on a regular basis as will even chipmunks. I cut down my trees because I got tired of feeding rodents- the last time I had a nice stash of nuts was when I found a chipmunk cache in the ground when planting a tree. What an ingenious storage system that was.

It is hard enough to keep the squirrels from fruit, but even if there are very few squirrels around they will usually take every hazel nut before they are completely ripe.

If you grow the trees out in the open with single straight trunks that are at least 4' above the ground before the first branches occur you can build baffles to keep rodents off the trees. I think squirrels would chew through anything less than chicken wire to get to nuts so netting is probably not adequate (unless you use chicken wire).

I have been growing a variety of blight resistant or blight immune hazelnuts in the the hot ,humid southeast for a number of years. Have at least 8 different varieties and according to the specialty grower in Oregon that I bought them from they should all have a pollinator or two close by. The trees are all doing beautifully and every year get loads of catkins and many blossoms. I get lots of hollow nuts indicating they are not getting pollinated. I have found a grand total of two nuts filled out so far in about 10 years of growing these trees. Some are quite large at this point. I am beginning to think it is my warm climate. It is now early September and the trees are loaded with catkins. We are still getting daytime temps in the 90s. and nights in the 60-70s. Catkins started forming in August. We will typically get a few January nights down to about 18 deg F. We get about 400-500 chilling hours below 40 deg F typically, but intermittent warm days throughout most of the winter. Many peaches and some low chill apples will produce here.

I need advice from an experienced Hazel nut grower. Is the problem that the trees are putting on catkins too early in the fall and blooming before the female blossoms open in the early spring. Could it be that boron too low. I have started using a boron supplement. Does anyone have a suggestion.