Riverbend Hazelnuts: January 2026

This has been the earliest Spring flowering I have recorded
March 15, 2025

The middle of March was unusually warm. The temperature was above 50º F for several days, which caused the catkins (male flowers) to elongate and release their pollen. The big problem was that there were no female flowers to pollinate. I began to collect catkins and save the pollen to hand pollinate as many female flowers as possible when they appeared.

3 weeks later on the 6th of April the female flowers began to appear at the end of the buds.

If you look close you can see the reddish flower on the end of the bud.

I was concerned about the lack of pollen for the female flowers, so I began hand pollinating my best plants.

One interesting thing I did notice is the wild American Hazelnuts did not release its pollen or produce female flowers until the middle of April.

I'm wondering if the hybrid plants need less chilling hours than the wild American plants to flower.

Chilling hours are the number of hours during winter when the temps are between 32º F and 45º F.

This would also explain last year's early release of pollen from the hybrid hazelnut plants.

This is one I pollinated and it did produce quite a few nuts.

This hazelnut plant also flowered early and only produce one or two nuts.

It has in the past produced a good crop every year but this last one.

Deer Damage

A buck had damaged this stem last fall and I thought it did not look too bad, but I was wrong.

It produced small leaves and small nuts.

I should have removed any stems that has this type of damage.

The small leaves are from the damaged stem, and the larger leaves are the normal size leaves of the same plant.

These 2 pictures show the size of the developing nuts on a different stems on the same plant.

The top picture is from the damaged stem.

I'm going to try to remove any old or damaged stems on my best plants, which should produce better and larger nuts.

4th of July

These 3 pictures show that most nuts reach their maximum size on the first week in July, but the kernel in side is still small and contains mostly water.

In August the kernel is full size, but still contains mostly water.

The water is replaced by oil the last week when it is maturing.

When picked too early the kernel has a low oil content and when dried down will look like a raisin.

I think the hardest part is keeping the squirrels away during this period of time.

July 12

It's only the middle of July and the squirrels have started on the hazelnuts.

This is the earliest I have seen this much damage.

I found the culprit but I think he has a few buddies.

His buddies showed up the next day and did more damage.

I'll just have to be on my toes and remove as many tree rats as I can catch.

The new hazelnut plants

This is one of new hazelnut seedlings.

The nut can be see at the bottom of the stem.

I usually remove the nut before moving them outside, because squirrels will pull the plant out and eat the nut. I left the nut on this seedling to determine if the plant grows faster and larger. To deter the squirrels I had to cage this plant.

There was very little difference between the plants with the attach nut and the plants that I had removed the nuts. I decided it was easier to remove the nut on the seedling and not have to cage the plant.

This is a seed grafted clone. This plant was grafted on a newly germinated seed.

Hazelnuts tend to sucker up if the main stem is damaged, so I used a seed from a plant that has almost no suckers. So far it's looking good.

These are all layered cloned plants that were removed from the parent plant this spring and they are all looking good.

This newly cloned plant even developed nuts.

The layered cloning process begins when suckers are about the size of the thickness of a pencil. They are then girdled by using a twist tie or a hog-ring pliers at the bottom of the stem. The next step is applying rooting hormone at that location and covering with 8 to 12 inches of compost. They will root just above the twist tie and the newly rooted clone can be removed the following spring.

I should mention that this plant never produced suckers until a buck deer broke off the top of the plant last fall.

Here we have more layered clones for next spring.

One thing to remember is to never let them dry out or they will callus but never produce any roots.

1st of September

Mid Harvest

When the husk starts to turn a darker color and the nut rolls out of the husk, it's time to pick that plant.

There are so many different varieties of hazelnut plants that each plant has to be checked for maturity of the nut. What makes even more difficult is that the nuts on one plant may not all be ready to pick at the same time. The nuts on the sunny side of the plant are ready about 2 days ahead of the shaded side.

These hazelnuts drops out of the husk when mature, which makes it a little difficult because one day it's on the plant and the next day they're on the ground.

This particular plant is favored by the squirrels with its thin shell and just laying on their dinner plate.

Here are some hazelnuts I've just picked.

The whole cluster is removed easily from the plant and when the cluster is dried down the nuts are easily removed from the husk.

These nuts have just been picked to make sure this plant has mature nuts and that they are easily removed from the husk. The nuts are checked in a couple places to make sure they are all ready to be picked.

Here is another plant that might have mature nuts.

Yes, this plant is ready to be picked.

This is may look like it's ready to be picked but the nut was hard to remove from the husk.

If the plant were picked now it would have a lower oil content.

Just a little reminder that the oil is replacing the water the last few days before maturity.

Every plant produces different amount of nuts, but this plant has produced 1 or even 2 bags of nuts every year.

After picking the clusters of nuts I immediately put them on my make-shift drying racks.

This is done to allow the hazelnut weevil larva to bore out and drop into the trays below.

It only takes about 2 hours for that larva to emerge from the nut.

I use this method to try to control the hazelnut Weevil.

It only takes a couple of days in the green house with fans to dry down the husk and remove the nut.

Being in the green house will also protect the nuts from squirrels and mice.

After drying and removing the weevil larva the nuts are placed in mesh bags until I have time to process them.

A few interesting things I found during harvest was this Shaggy Mane mushroom.

It is edible but I didn't dare to try it.

I also found a couple of these Hummingbird nests which really looked interesting.

Also during harvest I check for catkins. These are the male flowers that will release their pollen next spring. Multiple catkins as shown in the picture are more closely related to the European hazelnuts and the plants with single catkins are more closely related to the American hazelnuts.