Which ones are you growing? I have Halles Giant, Jefferson, Doris, Royal and Barcelona, all but the first planted this spring. I will be pruning suckers off all of them whenever the time is appropriate.

My wild hazelnuts went crazy this year, but the 3-4 nuts produced by the Halles Giant, the first for that plant, were all empty. I figured it was lack of pollination as that plant is around 100 feet from the wild ones, assuming they would pollinate anyway.

Chuck

Hazelnut blanks not due to lack pollination.

See the link ...

Here is a link that might be useful: see page 3

Thanks jean that makes sense it's been very dry here up until the last couple of months. The soil is heavy as well and not particularly good in that spot where I grow my hazelnuts. Chuck my hazelnuts are not a named variety so I think I will get some scion wood this spring and change over some of the bushes. Do you know a variety that would be a good choice for Kansas? As your aware we are a little dry and our soil is heavy.

I would love to grow hazelnuts, but I believe they will take about four years before bearing nuts. To hear that many of them are blanks is not good news. Is this typical? The trees obviously need watering during the summer. This I cannot do. Mrs. G

Clark,

Wild hazelnuts do very well in my area, basically smack in the middle of Missouri. The ones on my place that are producing lots of nuts are in one of the wetter spots, but I also protected them from deer long enough for them to get to their present size of about 7-8 feet tall. They are all multi-trunk shrubs rather than trees. I'm not sure you can even train the wild hazels as trees. As to growing them for the nuts, well, that may be rather disappointing. One of my shrubs produces nuts that are nearly as large as the commercial ones you get at the store, but the shell is much thicker and the nutmeat is about the size of a pea. I am shelling out a bunch of those this year because I bought a sheller for my pecans that works better on them than the pecans. So far I have maybe half a cup of nutmeats from about 2-3 cups of nuts. I also sometimes shell black walnuts, so I am a glutten for punishment. When my named hazelnuts start producing I will almost certainly leave the wild ones for the squirrels and hope they are happy with them.

My Halles Giant has been in the ground for two years (I think), and this year it produced 3-4 nuts, all of good size, but empty. I do not think the fact that they were empty is a particularly bad sign, since this was the first year it produced any nuts. Even if the lack of polination was not the only cause for the empty nuts I rather think it might have contributed. Hazelnuts should yield in perhaps 4-5 years from what I have read. I got mine from Burnt Ridge and Stark Bros. I would recommend Burnt Ridge as they have several varieties and their plants have been very nice. I only got two from Stark Bros because I originally ordered two different varieties from Miller Nurseries which went out of business before they filled my order, and Miller sold their customer list and unfilled orders to Stark. OTOH, The Royal and Barcelona I got from Stark are doing quite well. This year was a very good growing year here, with plenty of rain and less of the very high temps we often get in July and August. I don't know enough about your area, but it sounds as if you might have to water at least until the trees are established. I do that here because we usually have a really hot dry spell sometime during the summer. I watered all my newly planted hazels this summer, but only a couple of times, because we had sufficient rain. I have almost never watered any of my fruit or nut trees after they have a couple years of growth, and even though we had several years with hot and dry spells, I haven't lost any trees from that. Deer cause me much more trouble.

Chuck

Thanks Chuck the ones I grow are more shrub like as well so I would need to graft each one. Maybe I will give them some good fertilizer and cow manure and see if they don't come around. The last time I was here http://www.arbordayfarm.org/conservation2.cfm
I could clearly see I was doing something wrong. If the can grow them like that in Nebraska and they grow good in Missouri I see know reason I can't grow them in Kansas.

This post was edited by ClarkinKS on Thu, Oct 16, 14 at 20:19

How much rain do you get, Mrs G? Mine aren't old enough to bear, so if that can affect fruiting I'll have to change things. But they are growing nicely, in dipping holes on purpose to hold more water. Then I used a lot of peat (and manure) and leaves, etc, with clippings and leaves as mulch through the summer. That gets them through just great here.

I can water them more, but I haven't seen that they ever need it. I was trying to mimic the creek banks where they used to grow naturally here in my woods :)

I'm going to have to graft mine, too, if the eventual nuts don't suit me. I don't mind small, but there'd better be a lot of them!

Does anyone graft hazelnut, especially wild hazelnut? Most of the named hazels are produced by layering I think. I may try to do that with some of the suckers and extra branches I will be removing from my tame varieties this spring. Here's a picture of the cluster of 5 wild plants I have near my barn. The tallest is about 7 feet or so. The one on the far left produces nuts that are larger than the average nuts of the other plants.

I got all my wild hazels from the state conservation department. Very inexpensive, but of course they only sell to Missouri citizens for planting in Missouri.

Chuck

I couldn't figure out how to post multiple pics, so this pic is of a bag of nutmeats I have shelled out so far, and a group of the larger nuts I harvested, mainly from that one exceptional bush. The nut on the far right is one of the blanks from my Halles Giant, and the wild nut beside it is of almost comparable size, but the actual nutmeat will be smaller than from a comparable sized commercial nut. I meant to include something to give scale, but the nut on the far right is perhap 1/2 inch long.

Those look great Chuck!

Meredith, its either feast or famine in the NE. Tons of rain or dry, really hot or temperate, like this summer with little rain. Mrs. G