Another growing season
I started the hazelnut seedlings in the first week in March, which happened to be a little early and caused them to be too tall and lanky. This was due to the cool spring and not being able to move them outside or in the greenhouse without heating it continuously.
I usually stratify about 400 hazelnut seeds and out of those about 160 plants will germinate, but this year over 300 of those seeds germinated. I found that this is the max for the space I have to start seeds.
I started running out of room and stacking them anywhere there was room under the lights.
Finally it was warm enough to move the plants into the greenhouse with minimum heating at night, and I started using the solar panels to run a temperature sensor and fan.
After moving the all the plants to the greenhouse it was completely filled.
I actually had no idea how many plants I had until I moved them.
Even with all the hazelnut seedlings in the greenhouse, I began starting my garden vegetables and flowers.
I was surprised how much better the tomatoes and squash did in the greenhouse compared to trying to start them in the house. They are a little hard to see in this picture, but they are on the top shelf, far end.
This spring the hazelnuts flowered about 2 weeks later then usual, on the 25 of April.
They have been flowering the first week in April the past few years. I have found that hazelnuts flower after 2 consecutive 60ยบ days.
The picture above shows both the male catkins on the right and the female stigmas showing on the bud on the left.
This is another picture of a female hazelnut flower in the center of the picture.
I was trying to hand pollinate several plants, and found that female flowers only last 2 days before the buds began to swell and cover the stigmas. I did manage to get 3 plants hand pollinated.
This is a developing hazelnut cluster in the center of the picture on June 2. The cluster will usually contain 3 to 4 nuts.
On June 16 this new hazelnut cluster of 5 nuts has doubled in size.
These are the 1 year old plants that are for sale that have just leafed out.
Rabbit Damage
This last winter I had severe rabbit damage with the high level of snow in the orchard.
This is the look of the orchard now after regrowth. The hazelnut plants should be about 8 feet high, but most of the plants are only a little over 4 feet high. As you can see the rabbit missed a few plants. Next spring I will have to do a lot of pruning to obtain more of an upright structure then a low lying bush.
