What are your experiences with native hazelnuts? Let us know in the comments! To learn about another group of native shrubs that have year-round appeal and are a big hit with the birds and pollinators check out this video: th-cam.com/video/6xpiYJO-IGU/w-d-xo.html
I deeply appreciate that your videos are fast paced and jam packed with useful information without needless idle chatter and general prattering on. EXCELLENT WORK.
Beaked hazelnuts grow out here in Oregon too. We have a lot of it growing wild on our land. We've also planted about 20 hazelnuts (5 varieties) that were crossed to grow really well in our area just recently, and we were careful to protect them from all the deer with fencing. They're delicious and we eat them on our oatmeal every morning, so we're very invested in growing our own successfully! May have to net them to get any from all the wildlife out there, LOL!
im writing this comment to people who might consider the tree as ornamental purposes or hobby. you do not necessarily have to buy different hazel species. being non self-compatible doesnt necessarily mean same species cant pollinate each other. the hazel we have has a low value of 45% on self-pollination according to a research with isolated trees. also there are research on which species pollinate which ones better. i cant give info on that because i only know their local names, i believe they are all considered european hazelnut. so we have just a couple of those pollinator hazels that are compatible with our crop hazel in the orchard, like 2 or 3 per acre. and being in an area thats the capital of the hazelnut, everywhere is full of hazel trees so we dont have pollination issues. im sure a single hazelnut tree will fruit in isolation by pollinating itself, just the yield will be low. this pollination thing is similar to the periodicity. some fruits(including hazelnut) are few in some years and abundant the next year. but it doesnt mean a well maintained orchard will have much difference, its merely a tendency. it doesnt mean you will get nothing on the low year. conclusion, it doesnt mean you will get nothing from a single species.
Self incompatible in the plant world means an individual plant can't pollinate itself. So American or beaked hazels can pollinate other American or beaked hazels, but an individual shrub will produce no nuts or few underdeveloped nuts if it is isolated from other hazels. Since the native species aren't used in commercial nut production to any huge extent, and there are few if any cultivars, pollination charts like exists for the commercially important European hazels don't exist - except for if they can be used to pollinate European strains. For commercial production having peak pollination compatibility is super important for high yields. In wildlife plantings as long as you have 2 American or 2 beaked hazels you will have decent nut production. I know of a few wildlife plantings of American hazel that produce an incredible amount of nuts - but good luck collecting any to eat - the critters get them all!
Thanks for mentioning that even though each plant has both male and female flowers that you still need two separate plants to cross-pollinate. This is true for many, but not all, plants with this morphology, unfortunately it seems many nurseries don't know or think to tell this to customers.
Even plants that are self-fertile will often have better production if they are crosspollinated from another plant. I have people ask me all the time why they aren't getting berries/nuts/ other fruits and it is almost always due to a lack of a required pollinator. Most also tell me that they were never told they needed one when they bought their plants.
@@bobinmissouri I literally said that in my comment. Occasionally you can get fruit from only one plant but it's usually a smaller amunt, for best cross-pollination and better fruit production you need multiple plants as you have.
I have 3 of the american hazelnut that I got from Arbor Day foundation. They're about 5 years old now and just starting to produce flowers and catkins. I got 2 nuts last year. LOL. They are smaller - I didn't try to crack them. This video makes me want to plant them all along my fence line.
They make a great native hedge! Once they start producing nuts it will be a race with the critters if you want to sample any, Most of the birds and animals will start in on them before they are fully ripe.
I will wager that the only reason you only got two is because some other beastie hit them before you did. I can't tell you how many times it's happened to me, too.
@@BackyardEcology Yup. My way around it: I planted some bushes close to where I live. The beasties don't like to get seen while they're in the brush. So, I get enough hazelnuts every year. Homemade hazelnut ice cream. Hazelnuts stored in homegrown honey. Hazelnut bread. Good stuff. And, there are still plenty of other bushes at a property boundary for the critters.
It’s a challenge every year here to beat the squirrels to them. My biggest patch got bush hogged down last year right at harvest time. Enjoy your videos.
In our previous home (Outskirts of Vancouver, BC) Hazelnuts lined the roads and large properties, but we rarely harvested a single nut! In addition to the animals you already mentioned we would get black bears arriving in August. They would eat the nuts green! I was awoken many times to sounds of a bear munching green Hazel nuts out side our open window (it was August, but our bedroom was on the second floor). They would hold the branch down with their paws and systematically munch off each nut. 😅
Critters love them! Cool story about the black bears. We don't have bears in our area yet - but they are only a couple of counties away and the range is slowly expanding.
I wish I had seen this video 15 years ago. I bought a couple of hazelnut bushes from out of state. They didn’t make it. By the way Anthony, I just saw a video of a guy out at nite with a bright UV flashlight collecting caterpillars. I never knew many caterpillars glow under UV. Especially if they have any green on their bodies! ( I bought the UV beast high powered flashlight)😁
Quite a few insects and arachnids with glow under UV light. Scorpions are another great example of a critter that will glow brightly when exposed to UV.
Apparently it is from the middle Dutch word katteken, which means kitten and is thought to pertain to the resemblance of the long catkins to a cats tail.
Nice. Very interesting. Do the American hazelnuts coppice? Good to hear you advocate planting of local provenance seed. Me too. Over here in the UK we have Corylus avellana, the hazel. This has been coppiced (cut to ground in the expectation that it will re-grow and to use that regrowth) for over 3000 years. It is still coppiced and economically viable, although the area cut has drastically reduced since World War 1 and again after WW2.
Yes, the American hazelnut will coppice although it is managed more as a wildlife shrub here. If it gets too big it can be cut to the ground and will resprout. The hazel wood isn't used as much here as it is in Europe.
Coppicing is my favorite use for European filbert trees, especially the ones that get planted by jays and squirrels. The nuts are great, don't get me wrong, but if you don't spray them twice a year you don't get many nuts that aren't wormy. It seems like the American hazelnuts don't have nearly the trouble with worms. Anyway, coppicing ftw.
This is the third year for mine. When should I expect to have big harvests with the nuts? I have four bushes, and I took some cutting from one of them earlier this year and stuck them in the ground in hopes to have more. Thanks for all the information on these!
They should be getting close to producing. If you plan to harvest the nuts keep a close eye on them or the critters will eat them all well before they are ready to pick.
My trip through west Texas farm country included plenty of spots I would expect hazelnut to do well. If the native varieties give you trouble, try a European filbert. The Texas heat might give you trouble so they're likely to do better at higher elevations. For reference, we're at about 500 ft elevation, USDA zone 6b-9a. Maritime PNW. The wild hazelnuts here do well up to about 1000 ft elevation, give or take.
I live near Portland, OR on land that was converted from Hazelnut orchards to residential lots. We have three cluster like trees (at least 10') in our lower back yard under out Maples and Douglass Fir trees. I discovered last year they are Hazelnut trees. The lower back yard has mostly been left to do its own thing. What should I do to help them along?
If they look like they are doing well, you don't need to do anything. You can prune them occasionally if they look like they need it. Hazelnuts are fairly easy shrubs to manage.
They usually start producing a small crop around 4 years and will reach full production in 6-8 years. There are a lot of variables but this is fairly normal.
Thanks for the video, really want to add hazelnut to my yard. I know they will form thickets naturally but if you don't have a huge area is it possible to plant two (in order to actually get nuts) decently close together and prune them a bit over time? What would you say is the minimum width needed?
Hazelnut can take quite a bit of pruning and can grow close together. Some use it as a hedge between properties. I think you could plant them four feet apart and prune as needed and you should be good.
I bought my hazelnuts from a now defunct local nursery that used to sell lots of native and adaptive plants. 6 years in, I know that I bought a male and a female of this variety sorry I don't remember the variety.
American hazelnut is not native to Colorado, the beaked hazelnut is native to a small portion of the state. American hazelnut likes somewhat higher humidity which may be a problem in much of the west. The altitude would also be a huge hurdle for them to overcome.
Not sure. I still see them in the stores around here from time to time. I'll have to look and see if there are any in stock next time I go for groceries.
Hazelnut can take quite a bit of pruning. In fact, you can chop it to the ground and it will grown back with no problem - over and over. European hazels have been coppiced like that for hundreds of years.
If you're willing to put the work into it, you can prune it down to one trunk/stem and turn it into a small tree. By small I mean 20 feet tall, max. They require annual pruning and larger limbs can break off from getting too heavy for the wood to support (hazel wood is very soft and rots easily)
The best answer I can give is that it depends on what species or varieties are involved. Some hazelnuts are not compatible and some are. You may want to see what Oregon State has about compatibility between species, they do a ton of hazelnut work since Oregon is the largest producer of hazelnuts in the US.
Yes and no. The main issue with pollination between species and varieties is timing. You need a tree that produces pollen at the same time the other tree has flowers on. If you were a lunatic you could collect pollen in jars and hand pollinate, and that would work for any two hazelnut trees.
Layering is the easiest way to propagate from an existing bush. They have a very high germination rate in moist soil. You can probably get store bought in-the-shell hazelnuts to sprout.
There aren't many places that sell chinkapin seeds since they have to be planted soon after they ripen. I have grown them from seed but all of it was collected locally.
Call Oregon State University. They have the nation's preeminent hazelnut specialists working there. You can also get live trees from nurseries in Oregon, both native species and European varieties.
After the opening seconds of this vid, I felt personally attacked, you dirty involucre! 🙃 Seriously, though, I especially appreciated this video, having become interested in hazelnuts after reading Mark Shepard's _Restoration Agriculture_ and listening to a few of his presentations. The monoecious tree's self-incompatibility was vital to mention from the perspectives of practical application in the garden or landscape and that of natural selection alike.
I knew that opening would get some pushback! :) Thanks for the kind words! Hazelnuts should be utilized far more in the home landscape - they are so easy to grow, look cool, and you can eat the nuts. There is plenty to like about them.
I waited almost a decade for a crop. This year I picked some early to see if they will ripen on my porch so I can taste them. They are very small though. How do you crack them? Hoping to sound as professional and hit 1k subscribers too. Nice video!
Thank you! You can crack the hazelnuts with a regular nut cracker, or if too small for that with a light tap from a hammer. The shells aren't all that tough. Consistency and trying to improve 1% on each new video will go a long way to getting 1K subs! Stick with it and you will get there!
@@BackyardEcology Thank you! Will try the hammer. I picked the leaves off the first handful and they dried so will try those first. The rest I'm letting dry with the husk to see if any difference.
American hazelnut shells have a hardness not much more than leather. Scissors can open them up. European filberts have a much harder shell that you'll need to crack open. Around here (Oregon) it's a test of manly strength to be able to crack one nut against another by squeezing them together in your hand, but it only works when the nuts are fresh in the fall. Once they dry out they're too hard.
Do you know if the American Hazelnut performs similarly to the European species that's used in crafting - being relatively easy to coppice and split for fencing and hedging? One of my favorite channels, Abell To, works at it, managing a Hazel lot that he uses to make nice products in the tradition going back eons. th-cam.com/video/TU1SJgtU7eQ/w-d-xo.html I was curious about the settlers bringing that skill over to this side of the pond, but I can't find any references to such. Maybe they did for awhile in the New England region, but it didn't survive the migration westward? Anyhow, I'm thinking of plot on my land that could probably carry a nice number of American hazelnut and was curious to know how the wood worked for handicrafts around the homestead. The squirrels can have the nuts if I can get the wood!
They will coppice well, but I haven't seen much about using the wood. Most people in the US are planting them for wildlife, pollinators, and for the nuts.
Native hazelnuts tend to have much thinner stems that European filberts (hazelnut and filbert are interchangeable terms). You'll get more usable coppicing material from a European variety. I use larger poles (3-4 inches diameter) for bean poles in my garden. The wood rots very quickly, usually in not more than two seasons it takes about 3 years to get a 3 inch diameter pole and each bush produces 10-12 poles at a time. Greetings from Oregon, hazelnut capitol of the US
So, if I have two seedlings that have come up from an old heritage mother, Hazel tree, I have planted them separately on my property within close proximity of each other, will they pollinate each other or does it need to be a different original, Plants . I just wanna make sure I’m understanding they will not pollinate. If you only have one tree, the male and female flower will not pollinate each other on one tree. But if you have another tree of the exact same tree planted nearby, it can cross pollinate each other, correct?
If they are two seedlings (not root clones, suckers) from the same tree they should be good for producing some nuts, but for really great nut production two hazels from different lines will be better.
@@BackyardEcology I’m sorry what is the difference between a seedling and a root clone. They grew on their own surrounding their heritage mother, which is about 40/50 years old. And they just keep popping up all around her. A friend of mine dug them up and gave them to me about three years ago and I’m just wondering if I need to buy one from my nursery or if these guys will take care of each other.
@@naturalgardengrows Hazelnuts grow from root suckers to form a colony, a type of vegetative reproduction. Any of those sprouts originating from the roots of a parent plant will be clones of that parent plant, and of each other. Seedlings are produced from germinated nuts and are the product of sexual reproduction (which in hazelnuts requires two shrubs from different lines) - seedlings have genetic variability with each other. Chances are you have three genetically identical plants and you will likely need another genetically distinct hazelnut to get any nut production.
What are your experiences with native hazelnuts? Let us know in the comments! To learn about another group of native shrubs that have year-round appeal and are a big hit with the birds and pollinators check out this video: th-cam.com/video/6xpiYJO-IGU/w-d-xo.html
I deeply appreciate that your videos are fast paced and jam packed with useful information without needless idle chatter and general prattering on. EXCELLENT WORK.
Thank you! I try to keep the moving for maximum info in the least time needed.
I have around 250 American hazelnuts nuts bushes and they are loaded this year
Nice! The ones I have seen here in KY are loaded too. Good mast crop on the hazelnuts this year.
How do you keep the squirrels away? Just by having so many bushes they cant get to all of them?
@@joshua511 only seen 1 squirrel but have a few blue jays and 2 chickmunks boy still had around 100 pounds
Beaked hazelnuts grow out here in Oregon too. We have a lot of it growing wild on our land. We've also planted about 20 hazelnuts (5 varieties) that were crossed to grow really well in our area just recently, and we were careful to protect them from all the deer with fencing. They're delicious and we eat them on our oatmeal every morning, so we're very invested in growing our own successfully! May have to net them to get any from all the wildlife out there, LOL!
It is a race to beat the critters to the hazelnuts - especially since they will start on them well before they are ripe enough to harvest!
im writing this comment to people who might consider the tree as ornamental purposes or hobby. you do not necessarily have to buy different hazel species. being non self-compatible doesnt necessarily mean same species cant pollinate each other. the hazel we have has a low value of 45% on self-pollination according to a research with isolated trees. also there are research on which species pollinate which ones better. i cant give info on that because i only know their local names, i believe they are all considered european hazelnut. so we have just a couple of those pollinator hazels that are compatible with our crop hazel in the orchard, like 2 or 3 per acre. and being in an area thats the capital of the hazelnut, everywhere is full of hazel trees so we dont have pollination issues. im sure a single hazelnut tree will fruit in isolation by pollinating itself, just the yield will be low. this pollination thing is similar to the periodicity. some fruits(including hazelnut) are few in some years and abundant the next year. but it doesnt mean a well maintained orchard will have much difference, its merely a tendency. it doesnt mean you will get nothing on the low year. conclusion, it doesnt mean you will get nothing from a single species.
Self incompatible in the plant world means an individual plant can't pollinate itself. So American or beaked hazels can pollinate other American or beaked hazels, but an individual shrub will produce no nuts or few underdeveloped nuts if it is isolated from other hazels. Since the native species aren't used in commercial nut production to any huge extent, and there are few if any cultivars, pollination charts like exists for the commercially important European hazels don't exist - except for if they can be used to pollinate European strains. For commercial production having peak pollination compatibility is super important for high yields. In wildlife plantings as long as you have 2 American or 2 beaked hazels you will have decent nut production. I know of a few wildlife plantings of American hazel that produce an incredible amount of nuts - but good luck collecting any to eat - the critters get them all!
I smell an Oregonian
Thanks for mentioning that even though each plant has both male and female flowers that you still need two separate plants to cross-pollinate. This is true for many, but not all, plants with this morphology, unfortunately it seems many nurseries don't know or think to tell this to customers.
Even plants that are self-fertile will often have better production if they are crosspollinated from another plant. I have people ask me all the time why they aren't getting berries/nuts/ other fruits and it is almost always due to a lack of a required pollinator. Most also tell me that they were never told they needed one when they bought their plants.
on my hazelnut bushes I only have 1 type and every year they are loaded with nuts each bush has male and female on them
@@bobinmissouri I literally said that in my comment. Occasionally you can get fruit from only one plant but it's usually a smaller amunt, for best cross-pollination and better fruit production you need multiple plants as you have.
I have 3 of the american hazelnut that I got from Arbor Day foundation. They're about 5 years old now and just starting to produce flowers and catkins. I got 2 nuts last year. LOL. They are smaller - I didn't try to crack them.
This video makes me want to plant them all along my fence line.
They make a great native hedge! Once they start producing nuts it will be a race with the critters if you want to sample any, Most of the birds and animals will start in on them before they are fully ripe.
I will wager that the only reason you only got two is because some other beastie hit them before you did.
I can't tell you how many times it's happened to me, too.
@@JJLom777 You have to be quick! The critters will start to hit them well before they are fully ripe.
@@BackyardEcology Yup.
My way around it:
I planted some bushes close to where I live. The beasties don't like to get seen while they're in the brush. So, I get enough hazelnuts every year.
Homemade hazelnut ice cream.
Hazelnuts stored in homegrown honey.
Hazelnut bread.
Good stuff.
And, there are still plenty of other bushes at a property boundary for the critters.
@@JJLom777 I could put them on my porch and the squirrels, deer, and turkeys would still clean them out!
You stole my heart when you said "pollinate that like button" 😆
It’s a challenge every year here to beat the squirrels to them. My biggest patch got bush hogged down last year right at harvest time. Enjoy your videos.
Oh wow! Good news is they should come back. Hazelnuts can take some extreme disturbance, even getting top killed by fire only sets them back a bit.
In our previous home (Outskirts of Vancouver, BC) Hazelnuts lined the roads and large properties, but we rarely harvested a single nut! In addition to the animals you already mentioned we would get black bears arriving in August. They would eat the nuts green! I was awoken many times to sounds of a bear munching green Hazel nuts out side our open window (it was August, but our bedroom was on the second floor). They would hold the branch down with their paws and systematically munch off each nut. 😅
Critters love them! Cool story about the black bears. We don't have bears in our area yet - but they are only a couple of counties away and the range is slowly expanding.
LOLZ @ outer-space pineable! Another great vid!
Glad you enjoyed it
Like button pollinated! Love your channel!
Thanks! Glad you like the channel.
Very well put together video. Fast paced and full of information. Thank you!
Glad you liked it!
that birb looks really cool
My pet turkey loves them.😄
And, so do i.
I wish I had seen this video 15 years ago. I bought a couple of hazelnut bushes from out of state. They didn’t make it. By the way Anthony, I just saw a video of a guy out at nite with a bright UV flashlight collecting caterpillars. I never knew many caterpillars glow under UV. Especially if they have any green on their bodies! ( I bought the UV beast high powered flashlight)😁
Quite a few insects and arachnids with glow under UV light. Scorpions are another great example of a critter that will glow brightly when exposed to UV.
I have always wondered where the name catkins came from.
Apparently it is from the middle Dutch word katteken, which means kitten and is thought to pertain to the resemblance of the long catkins to a cats tail.
@@BackyardEcology oh cool
Nice. Very interesting. Do the American hazelnuts coppice? Good to hear you advocate planting of local provenance seed. Me too.
Over here in the UK we have Corylus avellana, the hazel. This has been coppiced (cut to ground in the expectation that it will re-grow and to use that regrowth) for over 3000 years. It is still coppiced and economically viable, although the area cut has drastically reduced since World War 1 and again after WW2.
Yes, the American hazelnut will coppice although it is managed more as a wildlife shrub here. If it gets too big it can be cut to the ground and will resprout. The hazel wood isn't used as much here as it is in Europe.
Coppicing is my favorite use for European filbert trees, especially the ones that get planted by jays and squirrels. The nuts are great, don't get me wrong, but if you don't spray them twice a year you don't get many nuts that aren't wormy. It seems like the American hazelnuts don't have nearly the trouble with worms. Anyway, coppicing ftw.
Thanks!
Thank you!
This is the third year for mine. When should I expect to have big harvests with the nuts? I have four bushes, and I took some cutting from one of them earlier this year and stuck them in the ground in hopes to have more. Thanks for all the information on these!
They should be getting close to producing. If you plan to harvest the nuts keep a close eye on them or the critters will eat them all well before they are ready to pick.
I love this! Thank you!
Glad you like it!
Love this video, very helpful, even though I live in Texas! Wish we could grow those nuts here!!!
Glad you enjoyed the video! Texas is just outside of the American hazelnuts range, they do make it to the southeast corner of Oklahoma.
My trip through west Texas farm country included plenty of spots I would expect hazelnut to do well. If the native varieties give you trouble, try a European filbert. The Texas heat might give you trouble so they're likely to do better at higher elevations. For reference, we're at about 500 ft elevation, USDA zone 6b-9a. Maritime PNW. The wild hazelnuts here do well up to about 1000 ft elevation, give or take.
I live near Portland, OR on land that was converted from Hazelnut orchards to residential lots. We have three cluster like trees (at least 10') in our lower back yard under out Maples and Douglass Fir trees. I discovered last year they are Hazelnut trees. The lower back yard has mostly been left to do its own thing. What should I do to help them along?
If they look like they are doing well, you don't need to do anything. You can prune them occasionally if they look like they need it. Hazelnuts are fairly easy shrubs to manage.
how long before they produce nuts?
They usually start producing a small crop around 4 years and will reach full production in 6-8 years. There are a lot of variables but this is fairly normal.
Bring on the windoodle!
Thanks for the video, really want to add hazelnut to my yard. I know they will form thickets naturally but if you don't have a huge area is it possible to plant two (in order to actually get nuts) decently close together and prune them a bit over time? What would you say is the minimum width needed?
Hazelnut can take quite a bit of pruning and can grow close together. Some use it as a hedge between properties. I think you could plant them four feet apart and prune as needed and you should be good.
@@BackyardEcology Thanks so much, that's great to know
I bought my hazelnuts from a now defunct local nursery that used to sell lots of native and adaptive plants. 6 years in, I know that I bought a male and a female of this variety sorry I don't remember the variety.
@@LIMABNIf they were European hazelnuts, the most common variety is Barcelona
I want to grow American hazelnuts but I live in Colorado. Is it possible to grow them here? I live at 7000 ft in zone 5. Thank you for your time.
American hazelnut is not native to Colorado, the beaked hazelnut is native to a small portion of the state. American hazelnut likes somewhat higher humidity which may be a problem in much of the west. The altitude would also be a huge hurdle for them to overcome.
@@BackyardEcology thank you so much for the reply. That will save me a lot of heartache in trying to grow them.
You are welcome! Altitude can be rough on many plants. @@Blackavian
I always saw hazelnuts in the store every fall, close to Thanksgiving, but in the past 2 years I haven't. Why, is there something wrong?
Not sure. I still see them in the stores around here from time to time. I'll have to look and see if there are any in stock next time I go for groceries.
i have a native hazelnut i think its the american hazelnut. i am hoping i can keep it pruned on the smaller side since i am in a small suburban plot
Hazelnut can take quite a bit of pruning. In fact, you can chop it to the ground and it will grown back with no problem - over and over. European hazels have been coppiced like that for hundreds of years.
If you're willing to put the work into it, you can prune it down to one trunk/stem and turn it into a small tree. By small I mean 20 feet tall, max. They require annual pruning and larger limbs can break off from getting too heavy for the wood to support (hazel wood is very soft and rots easily)
Great video, very informative but I have a question. Will the American hazelnut pollinate any other type hazelnut
The best answer I can give is that it depends on what species or varieties are involved. Some hazelnuts are not compatible and some are. You may want to see what Oregon State has about compatibility between species, they do a ton of hazelnut work since Oregon is the largest producer of hazelnuts in the US.
Yes and no. The main issue with pollination between species and varieties is timing. You need a tree that produces pollen at the same time the other tree has flowers on. If you were a lunatic you could collect pollen in jars and hand pollinate, and that would work for any two hazelnut trees.
I’m eating some now 😅😅😅
Are they easy to propagate from cuttings? I was going to try softwood cuttings from a few trees at a local park next year.
They can be propagated from cuttings but the success rate is low. Very easy from seed and they also layer quite easily.
Layering is the easiest way to propagate from an existing bush. They have a very high germination rate in moist soil. You can probably get store bought in-the-shell hazelnuts to sprout.
Where can I get the seeds?
There aren't many places that sell chinkapin seeds since they have to be planted soon after they ripen. I have grown them from seed but all of it was collected locally.
Call Oregon State University. They have the nation's preeminent hazelnut specialists working there. You can also get live trees from nurseries in Oregon, both native species and European varieties.
After the opening seconds of this vid, I felt personally attacked, you dirty involucre! 🙃
Seriously, though, I especially appreciated this video, having become interested in hazelnuts after reading Mark Shepard's _Restoration Agriculture_ and listening to a few of his presentations. The monoecious tree's self-incompatibility was vital to mention from the perspectives of practical application in the garden or landscape and that of natural selection alike.
I knew that opening would get some pushback! :) Thanks for the kind words! Hazelnuts should be utilized far more in the home landscape - they are so easy to grow, look cool, and you can eat the nuts. There is plenty to like about them.
I waited almost a decade for a crop. This year I picked some early to see if they will ripen on my porch so I can taste them. They are very small though. How do you crack them? Hoping to sound as professional and hit 1k subscribers too. Nice video!
Thank you! You can crack the hazelnuts with a regular nut cracker, or if too small for that with a light tap from a hammer. The shells aren't all that tough. Consistency and trying to improve 1% on each new video will go a long way to getting 1K subs! Stick with it and you will get there!
@@BackyardEcology Thank you! Will try the hammer. I picked the leaves off the first handful and they dried so will try those first. The rest I'm letting dry with the husk to see if any difference.
@@maryquitecontrary93 Please let us know how it turns out!
American hazelnut shells have a hardness not much more than leather. Scissors can open them up. European filberts have a much harder shell that you'll need to crack open. Around here (Oregon) it's a test of manly strength to be able to crack one nut against another by squeezing them together in your hand, but it only works when the nuts are fresh in the fall. Once they dry out they're too hard.
Do you know if the American Hazelnut performs similarly to the European species that's used in crafting - being relatively easy to coppice and split for fencing and hedging? One of my favorite channels, Abell To, works at it, managing a Hazel lot that he uses to make nice products in the tradition going back eons. th-cam.com/video/TU1SJgtU7eQ/w-d-xo.html
I was curious about the settlers bringing that skill over to this side of the pond, but I can't find any references to such. Maybe they did for awhile in the New England region, but it didn't survive the migration westward? Anyhow, I'm thinking of plot on my land that could probably carry a nice number of American hazelnut and was curious to know how the wood worked for handicrafts around the homestead. The squirrels can have the nuts if I can get the wood!
They will coppice well, but I haven't seen much about using the wood. Most people in the US are planting them for wildlife, pollinators, and for the nuts.
Native hazelnuts tend to have much thinner stems that European filberts (hazelnut and filbert are interchangeable terms). You'll get more usable coppicing material from a European variety. I use larger poles (3-4 inches diameter) for bean poles in my garden. The wood rots very quickly, usually in not more than two seasons it takes about 3 years to get a 3 inch diameter pole and each bush produces 10-12 poles at a time.
Greetings from Oregon, hazelnut capitol of the US
So, if I have two seedlings that have come up from an old heritage mother, Hazel tree, I have planted them separately on my property within close proximity of each other, will they pollinate each other or does it need to be a different original, Plants . I just wanna make sure I’m understanding they will not pollinate. If you only have one tree, the male and female flower will not pollinate each other on one tree. But if you have another tree of the exact same tree planted nearby, it can cross pollinate each other, correct?
If they are two seedlings (not root clones, suckers) from the same tree they should be good for producing some nuts, but for really great nut production two hazels from different lines will be better.
@@BackyardEcology I’m sorry what is the difference between a seedling and a root clone. They grew on their own surrounding their heritage mother, which is about 40/50 years old. And they just keep popping up all around her. A friend of mine dug them up and gave them to me about three years ago and I’m just wondering if I need to buy one from my nursery or if these guys will take care of each other.
@@naturalgardengrows Hazelnuts grow from root suckers to form a colony, a type of vegetative reproduction. Any of those sprouts originating from the roots of a parent plant will be clones of that parent plant, and of each other. Seedlings are produced from germinated nuts and are the product of sexual reproduction (which in hazelnuts requires two shrubs from different lines) - seedlings have genetic variability with each other. Chances are you have three genetically identical plants and you will likely need another genetically distinct hazelnut to get any nut production.
@@BackyardEcology thank you for explaining that to me. I appreciate it. Now I understand.
"pollinate that like button" LOL
Can confirm, native hazelnuts taste better than filberts. Downside, they're tiny by comparison.
i was told the native hazelnut was self fertile!!!!!
Nope. They have both male and female flowers on the same shrub, but are self incompatible and need another hazel to cross pollinate.