A Strange Year 2024

Bats in the hazelnuts

I don't mind bats but when picking hazelnuts and your hand comes close to touching one, I jump back swinging my arms. This has happened a couple times, so now I call it the bat dance.

Seed grafting

Jim Walla gave me these grafting clips to try on my seed grafting trials. By April 19 I had only germinated 3 seeds from the seed stock that I planned to use for grafting. The grafting clips worked great and they were much easier then trying to wrap them with ParaFilm around a small stem. Grafting on newly germinated seed is very small work and neither my eyes or hands are as good as they used to be.  

The seed grafts on May 1st and looking good.

These 2 pictures are same grafted seedlings this fall after leaf drop. I just could not believe the catkins on these plants.  They should be removed to let the plant grow for another year or more before fruiting, but I was so curious to see if these plants would flower and have nuts on next summer.

Spring flowering

This spring was very unusual with temps around 50º F in the first 2 weeks in March. I think one day it was almost 60º.  The hazelnuts began to flower, which usually happens around April 15.

The picture above is the catkins (male flowers) beginning to elongate and release pollen.

On this picture you can see the the red female flower appear from the bud. The red female flowers are not very big and one has to look hard to find them. They appear later after the catkins have expanded and started to release pollen.

This is what the hazelnuts looked like on March 14th before the big freeze.

A few days later this is what they looked like with temps never getting above freezing.

This picture was taken on March 27th with the temperature of 18º F

I was hoping some of flowers had been pollinated before the temperature dropped.

After the cold temperature the female flowers on the end of a buds look black.

I read that this not good and the flower will drop off when the leaves appear.

Before the cold snap I collected catkins to cross pollinate some of my best plants.

The elongated catkins are laid out on paper until they release their pollen.

I then shake the catkins and remove them from the paper.

 

The paper is folded and the pollen is tapped into a small vial.

I keep the small vial in the fridge until I see the female flowers appear on the buds.

 

After the big freeze on May 1st the temperature began to warm up and I noticed some flowers begin to appear lower down on the shaded side of the hazelnut plants.

I began to hand pollinate by removing the cover of the vial and tipping it over on to my finger.

The next step is to rub that pollen onto this small red flower on the end of the bud.

These are some of the hand pollinated nuts.

There is always something new every year. This is the first year that I've had Sapsucker (woodpecker) damage on hazelnut stems. I counted damage on 8 different hazelnuts. The leaves on these plants were small and the nuts were the size of peas.

I used Tree Tanglefoot on these stems and the Sapsucker disappeared.

Harvest 2024 is not looking good.

Most of the hybrid hazelnuts only had a hand full of nuts, but the wild American hazelnuts (Corylus Americana) had a fair crop. This is my opinion but I think the hybrid hazelnuts tend to bloom earlier than the wild hazelnuts. The wild American hazelnuts seem to be better adapted to our northern climate which is something I hope to pass on to the hybrid hazelnuts. 

It also could be location whether in full sun, shade, exposed to wind or in an area with no wind.

Hazelnuts from each plant are in separated drying racks.

They will be dried down until the husk can be removed from the nut.

This may look like a lot of hazelnuts but after the husks are removed and weevil damaged nuts taken out there are not many left.

The nuts with the husk removed are then placed in separate labeled bags.

As you can see there are not many nuts from each plant. 

This hazelnut plant had a few more nuts.

This years crop was poor, so picking went fast and I had time to evaluate each plant. It gave me time to decide which plants I will keep or remove.  

Every year I always have problems with weevils. I loose about 10% or more to weevils

I try to pick all the nuts on one plant then dry them on racks with trays underneath to catch the weevils.

I have found that more and more weevils are leaving the nuts before they're picked.

This is a picture from a couple years ago when I picked a lot more nuts.

This year the Black Walnuts and Oaks had no nuts or acorns.

I had to fight for every hazelnut from these pests.

 Camping Trip

We were camping at McCarthy Beach State Park in Minnesota and I found lots of Beaked Hazelnuts (Corylus Cornuta).

I found it strange that I could not find any wild American Hazelnuts in the park.

While camping we spent one day biking on the Mesabi Trail. 

We had a great day on the trail and I could not believe all the American Hazelnuts.

This is a couple pictures of the hazelnuts we saw on the Mesabi Trail.

Fall Colors

This year we seemed to have a long fall with more red and orange colors on lots of the hazelnut plants.

This year I was late putting up cages to protect against deer.

This buck had a great time on one of my best cloned plants.

This buck tore up several hazelnut plants in one night.

I was hoping this buck would disappear during hunting season.

I was wrong he is still here after hunting season and doing more damage.

I think during hunting season he stays close to all the homes in the area with bird feeders. Something has been emptying our bird feeder almost every night.

Here a close up of that same deer from my trail-cam.

Pecans

My Northern Pecans are looking good.

I should have nuts in 2055, can't wait.

Chicken of the woods

Look what I found in my hazelnut orchard. This mushroom is called chicken of the wood and was growing on an old Ash stump.

I really like this mushroom and can't wait to cook them up.

These are a few of the hazelnut seedlings I had for sale.

This is the first time I'm sold out of all the potted plants.

Hope your year was as interesting as mine, remember there is always something new next year.

 

Epicotyl Grafting

Hypocotyl versus Epicotyl

I originally thought that I was grafting onto the hypocotyl of the seedling's stem, but was informed that if that part of the stem is above the cotyledons it is called the epicotyl.

 Epicotyl graft is grafting a scion onto a newly germinated seedling's stem.

I should have taken more pictures when I was removing the newly germinated root stock and doing the grafting, but I had total graft failure last year and was not expecting anything better this year. This year's trials were much better with 15 successful grafts out of 30. Grafting stems that are smaller than 1/8" is a real challenge for me.

The epicotyl grafting procedure I used was;

1. To find some very small/thin scion's from my best plants and store them in ziplock bag in the fridge.

                                                   2. Find a rootstock with limited suckers.

3. Germinate the rootstock in a closed container with a 50% mix of vermiculite and peat to produce a long epicotyl stem.

4. Remove the newly sprouted seedlings and cut the stem off at the thickest part about 3/4" from the base.

5. Find a scion about the same thickness as the rootstock stem and trim the scion into a wedge shape.

6. Insert the scion into a vertical cut in the epicotyl stem, then wrap the graft with parafilm. 

7. Next dip the scion and graft into warm liquid paraffin wax. Coating the scion and graft.

8. Then immediately dip in cold water.

9. Plant the grafted seedling in a good potting mix.

10. Place in a closed container with a clear top and maintain the temperature at about 70 to 80º F.

I did mist it a couple times to maintain the humidity.

  

This is the grafted plants 5 days later. As you can see some are suckering up from the rootstock.

Here you can see more suckers and stems starting to grow below the grafts.

I tried removing the suckers, but this was unsuccessful and the swelling buds on the grafted stems dried up.

This is a close up of a failing graft with a stem growing below the graft. 

I moved the grafted plants to the greenhouse to start hardening them off and I noticed catkins forming on the grafted scions. I was so surprised to see catkins on a 2 month old seedling. The catkins were removed to let the plant grow a little bigger during the summer.

This probably happened because the scion was taken from the top of a mature plant.  Next time the scion will be taken from a lower immature stem. The biggest problem is to find a hazelnut rootstock from a newly germinated seedling which will not sucker up. 

This is what the graft looks like after 4 months of growth.

This is a picture of the whole plant after 4 months.

At the end of the summer I had 14 nice looking clones.

Still hazelnuts tend to sucker up and this would interfere with the cloned plant.

So this next growing season I am going to replant with the graft below the soil level and see if roots will develop above the graft. During this period of time any suckers that form on the rootstock will be remove.

I've also thought of using clonal material from these new cloned plants this spring. This would make things a little easier than trying to locate small/thin stems in the orchard.