While visiting our daughter in Corvallis, Oregon in the first week in March, we toured some of Oregon State University's greenhouses and test plots. I found it very interesting, especially the hazelnut plant research, and thought it would be interesting to show some of the things we've seen on our trip.
Oregon State University
We first toured the hazelnut test plots that OSU uses for testing their fruit and nut trees. This picture is of the older hazelnuts, which are most all identical clones. Because hazelnut plants are not self pollinating, they need a different cultivar to pollinate the cloned plants. The pollinator is painted white which is on the right in this picture. There are also a pollinators on every 5th plant in the same row. All of these hazelnuts are in full bloom with pollinator producing large amounts of pollen.
Right beside the hazelnuts where these apple or cherry trees pruned to about 5 or 6 feet high.
I was surprised they pruned them so low. If my apple trees where pruned that low the deer would have nipped the new branches and eaten the apples. I'm wondering if they even have deer in the area.
In this picture the hazelnut plants were planted about 2 feet apart. I was told they were going to be dug up and used for bare root planting.
What have they done to these hazelnuts?
As I looked closer I realized they were mound layering these plants to clone them. It looks like they just removed all the layered suckers.
This green house was filled with this plant. Can you guess what it is?
Here is another look at the hemp that they were growing. Some of these plants were almost 10 ft high.
I don't think I could work in this greenhouse because the heavy smell from the hemp.
I just could not believe at all the new hazelnut plantings in the area.
In this picture the hazels are in full flower and have just been pruned.
I'm guessing these hazelnut trees here are about 3 years old and about half are flowering.
In this field I could believe how large these new planting are, the row must be about a mile long because I could not see the end of the rows.
I noticed some of the trunks painted white to indicated that they must be the trees used to pollinate the rest of the field.
Here you can see the ground is yellow from all the pollen being shed from the hazelnut plants.
I just happened to bring some of the pollen back with me to try to pollenate some to my hazelnut plants. I just wish I knew what cultivars they are.
This is an older field of hazels. I just couldn't believe how flat and weed free the ground is.
It just didn't look right with no ground cover, but in a commercial operation you need it to look like this if the nuts are going to be swept off the ground.
North Dakota Hazelnuts
Back home in North Dakota, my hazelnuts just started blooming on 20th of March which is really early. It's usually been about the first week in April. I also hand pollinated these with the Oregon pollen, and hoping for some Oregon crosses.
Here is a 2 year old clone that was flowering and should produce nuts this year.
Here is that same clone with the catkins (male flowers) and the red stigmas (female flowers) at the end of the buds. These were also pollenated with Oregon hazelnuts.
These are some the new plants that were stratified and just germinated on the 21 of March.
Now we wait to see how the plants overwintered, work on germinating more seedlings, and transfer plants to the greenhouse for spring.
