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.

Disappointing Harvest 2023

This was a disappointing year with frost damage in the spring and only a few hazelnuts to harvest in the fall. To top that off there was rabbit damage during the winter and me trying to pick the few nuts before the squirrels do.

This picture sent to me by a friend asking me what's wrong with these hazelnut plants. I had no idea and went to check the hazelnut plants in my orchard and found the exact same thing on several of my plants.

Every thing above the snow line had small or no leaves at all and below the snow line everything was normal. I contacted several people and they told me it looked like late frost damage. 

It might also be that these plants are not quite hardy for our climate in this area.

I remove all the stems on these plants with no leaves in the fall, and listed these plants on my database as having this problem.

This year, 2023, started with a late spring with 3 ft of snow in the orchard. In the beginning of April we had a few warm days in the 50's and the catkins began expanding and releasing their pollen, then the temp dropped to 15º F on the 15th of April and stayed cool until May.  Flowering and pollination usually occurs between 15th and the 29th of April.  Then on May 7 the female flower began to appear at the same time as  the buds began to swell, almost covering the flower. In the picture above you can just barely see the small red flower at the end of the bud.

I was trying to find information on flowering and bud-break. One article from Thomas Molnar of Rutgers state that the timing of flowering and leaf bud-break is determined by chilling and growing degree day requirements of about 9633.  This spring I'll have to record the average GDH's for each day minus 39.9 and see if this holds true. This may help determine the flowering dates of my best plants for cross pollination. 

The next problem this spring was spray damage from a lawn company that sprayed my neighbor's yard.

The white material on the leaves is not a pest but cotton from cottonwood trees in are yard.

The spray damage in this picture caused the new forming nuts to turn brown and fall off.

Some plants that were farther away had curled leaves but did produce hazelnuts.

I had just moved a few new seedlings out of the green house the day before they sprayed my neighbor's yard. The following day you can already see the leaves start to curl from the herbicide spray.

This is the same plants 4 weeks later. 

I'm wondering if it will leaf out this spring.

I asked the lawn care company to be more careful and they told me it was a little herbicide drift and the plants will leaf out again. Then they snuck in early one morning a few weeks later and sprayed again. 

I should have had them buy all the seedlings they damaged.  I surely would not want to sell any of these plants.

These are seedlings that were moved out of the green house later after they had sprayed.

I just wanted to show what they're suppose to look like. 

This was not the year for growing hazelnuts. The next problem was squirrels. On July 21 the tree-rats began remove hazelnuts which where not even close to being mature. They are not mature and ready to pick until the 2nd or 3rd week in August.

With a lot less nuts to pick I had time to evaluate each plant and cull the undesirable plants after picking the few nuts.

I removed the plant if it had EFB (Eastern filbert blight), small nuts, too thick of a shell, taste bad or if the plant tends to spread by suckering . I removed 86 plants that had 3 or more of these bad traits.

whoo! I almost cut this robin's nest down. It's a good thing the bird let me know it was up there.

Here are some of the stems that were removed. The center stem has the telltale cankers from Eastern Filbert Blight which would eventually kill the entire plant.

I try to burn all EFB stems.

These are a few of the stems I cut down.

In this picture I saved the larger stems for my wood working projects.

This is my latest wood working project, a plant stand with a ceramic tile for a top.

The tile was left over from a flooring project, and I don't think I will not run out of hazelnut wood any time soon.

This is my pest management system for mice and squirrels.

At the bottom of the picture are a pile of cut down hazelnut stems that are waiting to be removed.

Here we have our pest control patrolling the hazelnut orchard.

 

These are the different types of hazelnuts that I saved from the squirrels.

I think because of the dry summer and fall a lot of the nuts did not completely fill out. What I mean by not filling out is the kernel did not completely fill the shell. 

The only plants that are watered are the newly planted seedlings and the 1 year old plants. 

Watering the plants with the larger better nuts is definitely a good idea in dry conditions. 

These two pictures are what the hazelnut orchard looks like after removing over 60 plants from this area.

The white paint indicates save and the red is remove.

If I where planting for maximum nut production the spacing would be 15 ft between rows and 5 to 8 ft in rows.

This is that same part of the orchard from outside the fence.

It looks as if no plants where removed.

The long and mild fall turned the orchard into some very nice fall colors.

Here is a look at the fall colors in another part of the hazelnut orchard.

This is the fall colors of a wild American hazelnut (Corylus Americana) that is from Northern Minnesota.  It is the first to turn color and drop its leaves

This is a hybrid hazelnut with more of a orange leaf.

I just had to show this picture of the shagbark hickory's fall colors.

This tree grows 2 feet or more every year and is already over 30 feet.

Sorry to say no nuts yet.

I think it may be around 10 years old.

This year the sea buckthorn was loaded with these bright orange berries.

They looked great this fall and taste like grapefruit juice.

They are a little hard to pick with all the thorns.

 

 

I was at the NDSU tree arboretum near Absaraka which is now called the Dale Herman Research Arboretum, and found some of my hazelnuts still growing that Kelsey planted there when she was at NDSU.   I was really surprised to find nuts on some of them. I had thought they had been removed a couple years ago. Another interesting thing is they have no squirrels there. I'll have to find out how they removed them.

 

 Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

 

Rabbit Destruction January 18, 2023

Rabbits!

I thought my fence around the orchard was doing a good job, until I found this on 16th of January.

This 10 year old apricot tree was the first thing I noticed in bad shape. I was hoping for apricots this spring but that's not going to happen now.

I'll have to try to graft some scions on the bottom of this tree in the spring.

As I looked around the orchard I found the rabbit had clipped off branches of several my 3 year old hazelnuts and ate all the catkins off.

I don't expect any nuts on these this summer.

Here is some more damage on some older plants.

I'm really beginning to hate these furry little rodents.

This is another picture of a 4 yr hazelnut plant.

I don't expect any nuts on this one either

I also had 3 Nanking cherry plants which must have been dessert for the rabbits.

All this damaged happened in 3 days. 

This is a pear that I just planted last spring.

There is about 2 feet of snow around this pear and I did put tree wrap on it also.

I'm hoping for some new shoots lower down above the graft. 

Even on this old apricot tree the rabbits took some of the bark off.

I was really upset when the rabbits damaged this apricot tree which had 4 different types of apricots grafted on it.

I also had black raspberries growing on the fence which the rabbits must also like. 

I took a picture of the fence which the rabbits have to squeeze through.

The chicken wire (poultry netting) was only 2 feet high, so next summer I'll have to add another 2 or 3 feet of chicken wire to the fence and hope we don't get 6 feet of snow next year. 

I have a trail-cam in the back by the orchard and caught this mini beaver headed for dinner in the orchard.

 

In the center of picture you can see his eyes shining as he squeezed through the fence.

I set up 2 live traps and caught 3 rabbits in a couple days.

I'm hoping that's all of the rabbits that have been able to get through the fence into the hazelnut orchard.

2022 Hazelnuts in North Dakota and Minnesota

Sibley State Park

We were camping in Sibley state park in Minnesota on July 12th, and found these hazelnut plants growing on a hiking trail. I was not surprised to find hazelnut plants in the park, but as we hiked the trail I found several different types of hazelnut plants that look almost completely different. The next pictures shows the different types of husks or involucres on these plants.

On this plant the husk was open showing the nut in side.

The husk on this hazelnut plant had small sticky hairs, which might detour the squirrels and chipmunks.

On this plant the nut was enclosed with a very thick juicy husk around it.

The husk on this one was very short with some small red hairs and a slight reddish color.

This plant has these large leafy husks. These were a little hard to find because they resembled the leaves that were covering them. 

I was so surprised by the very large leafy husks on this plant.

This small  slightly open husk covering  a very small nut with sticky little hairs.  All these hazelnut plants are the  American Hazelnut (Corylus americana) and they form a thick suckering shrub about 5 feet high.

These are beaked hazelnuts (Corylus Cornuta) which is also bushy shrub, but seem to be taller about 6 to 7 feet. As you can see they have a long leafy beak shape husk. I was just amazed that there are so many variations of hazelnut husks in such a small area.

Maplewood State Park

On October 5th we visited Maplewood state park and found these hazelnut plants. The nuts were long gone probably remove by the many squirrels and chipmunks that were everywhere. 

They had a very dark marroon color and a catkin, the male flower, laying on one leaf. The catkins appear on the plant in the late summer and will open in the spring to release their pollen 

 

This is another picture of the same plant. The hazelnut shrub was very short about 3 to 4 feet high with very thin stems and lots of small suckering stems coming up around the plant. 

This would not be a plant you would want in your garden or back yard, but would be great for a riparian buffer zone along a river to hold the river bank from washing away.

Hazelnut from flower to mature nut

I wanted to show a developing nut from flowering to a mature nut, so I took pictures of the same branch during the spring, summer, and fall.

April 18th the female flower appeared on a bud and below the male flowers or catkin began to open up and release their pollen.

It is June 3rd and the husk and nuts  are just starting to develop on the end of this new stem. 

There is a delay of over a month or more between when the pollen is received and when the embryo is fertilized and starts to develop.

 July 7th and the new nuts can be seen in the husk. In July the shell of the nut will grow to its full size, but it will take another month for the kernel to fill the shell.

28-Aug and the kernel has filled the shell but the kernel contains mostly water and in the next week or two will be replaced with oil. If the nut were picked now the husk would not release the nut and the kernel would shrivel when dried and look like a raisin.

Sept 1st and the nut's abscission layer has form and now can easy be removed from the husk.

The nut cluster  also has an abscission layer forming and can be removed from the branch with limited damage to the plant.  The nut clusters will fall to the ground in another week if not remove by some furry varmit.  

Here is another cluster of nuts from that same plant.

Harvest started on the 28 of August this year and finished on 20th of September.

Because of the many different varieties in the orchard no more then 1 or 2 plants are ripe at the same time.

This is great for me because I wouldn't be able to pick over 300 plants in 2 days.  For a commercial orchard to make money this would not be ideal because each plant would have to be checked to make sure the nuts were mature and ready to be picked. In Oregon all the plants in an area ripen at the same time  because they are the same cloned plant in one field except for a few different types that are used for pollination. Hazelnuts are not self pollinating and need a different varity for pollination.

Harvest 2022

July 22, harvest wasn't even close and the squirrels started stripping the immature hazelnuts off the plants.

I think this was due to the bumper crop of hazelnuts and the lack of oak acorns and black walnuts.

I'm just guessing but I think I lost over 75 pounds of nuts to the squirrels. 

During harvest I usually find some unusual husks. This plant had these very long almost beak like husks.

Here are what the nuts looked like from these long husks.

I did have a few problems with this husk because when the husk was dried down it enclosed the nut and would not release it.

On some plants you can tell if is ready to be picked by the brown color of the husk.

To be sure I always make sure the nut rolls out of the husks.

Not all husks turn brown to indicate it's ripe. On this plant the husk stays green even though the nut is mature and rolls out of the husk. Every year I record the date specific plants are ripe, so I have a good idea when to pick certain plants. 

This plant has 8 to 12 nuts in a cluster, and they are so tightly pack that the nuts never drop out of the husk. In a few days the plant will drop the whole cluster and still the nuts are hard to remove from the cluster.  Also some of the nuts in the clusters are very small. I prefer only 4 nuts in a cluster so this plant might have to be eliminated even though it's a heavy producer of nuts every year.

This plant just has singles with no clusters and a round very sticky husk and large nut.

The  positive side of this plant is the squirrels tend to leave alone.

This is another plant that just started producing these large single nuts that drop out of the husk when dried down. I'll have to evaluate this plant for a couple years to see how many nuts it will produce. I'm always excited to see a new plant that produces a nice round nut.

September 7th and almost done with harvest only 5 more plants to go.

As you can see my greenhouse turns into a large drying rack. 

The greenhouse has good airflow with the fans and venting and the big plus is it protects the nuts from squirrels and mice.

This allows me to remove the dried husk in just a few days and put the nuts into storage.

I'm also keeping the hazelnuts from each plant separated to evaluate and record each one. That way I can eliminate the undesirable plants. I try to remove about a hundred plants every year and plant new and hopefully better hazelnut plants.

In this part of the orchard I planted the hazelnuts 3 feet in-row and 5 feet between the rows. I originally did this to reduce the weeds and grass.  It worked but the plants produce a lot less nuts and all the nuts are at the top. When planting for production space them more then 5 feet in-row and 10 feet or more between rows.

Now that I've harvested and evaluated these plants for a couple of years, I can remove the ones with bad traits like small thick nuts, bad taste, suckering, and no resistance to EFB.  

October 1st and some of the hazelnuts are turning colors.

These plants are impressive in the fall but I have not found a plant yet with a good fall colors and large tasty nuts.

This is a wild hazelnut with good color from northern Minnesota a couple miles from the Canadian boarder. This was my first hazelnut planted in 1979.

I had a couple seedlings that stopped growing and the leaves became small and deformed

Here is a close up of the leaves. I originally thought of herbicide drift, but none of the other plants had any damage. The plant right next to it shown below had no damage.

Charles Elhard from USDA inspected the plants and inform me that it was not a herbicide injury and was probably a micronutrient deficiency from nickel, zinc, or boron called mouse ears. He said it might be generic to that specific plant.

Thanks Charles for the help and information.

I removed both plants and replaced them with new seedlings. 

This seedling was right next to the one with deformed leaves.

 

I found this on the fence when picking hazelnuts. It's the large caterpillar of the Sphinx moth.

I was worried that it may be harming my hazelnuts but found out it prefers grape leaves.

I almost grabbed this bat when picking hazelnuts. It sure shook me up when I almost touched him.

That was too close, I really didn't want rabies shots.