Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Fall 2018

Fall colors cut short



This is last years fall colors of a hazelnut plant by our deck.
2017




This picture is the same 
hazelnut plant this fall after a frost.
Not much color here.
2018


Some of the hazels that did have a little fall color.


This wild hazelnut which came from Roseau MN has good fall colors every year. It tends to change leaf color and drop its leaves a week before the hybrid hazels.





This is a close up of the same plant, in which you can see the catkins. These catkins are the male flowers that will open in the spring to produce the pollen for next years crop.





I found one more hazelnut plant with some reddish color.  
The rest lost their leaves during a frost one night. The temp was in the 20's



The rest of the plants had very little fall color before the frost.





This is a Beaked hazelnut, Corylus cornuta, did have a yellowish green color. A good way to identify a Beaked hazelnut is by its dual catkins pointing upward



Here we have a typical American Hazelnut ( Corylus Americana) with its single catkins hanging down from the branch, which just start turning color.




Besides harvest I also inspected all the plants for EFB (Eastern Filbert Blight) in the fall, and eliminate any plant that has been infected. This is a good example EFB on this branch.




After the evaluation of each type of hazelnut I found a wide range of diversity in this years crop. These are just a few of the different types of nuts from this years harvest.




This is my harvest of hazelnuts for 2018, after eliminating the bad tasting and the ones too small to process. Next step is the cracking and eating.

Hope everyone has a great Halloween🌰.