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.

 

The Cool Spring 2022

 What a strange Spring! Warm, wet then cold with more snow in April.

This is the normal snow melt in March with the ground still frozen and the hazelnut plants along the ditch are under water. This is quite different than last year when the ditch never had any water in it.

On the 14th of April the catkins (male flowers) began to elongate and shed their pollen.

 

On the 15th of April the Stigmas (female flowers) began to appear on the buds.

That night temperature dropped to 15º F and stayed cold with highs in the low thirties. This it what it looked like on 17th of April.                                                                

It will be interesting to find out how hardy the hazelnuts are during flowering.

This is that same flower 4 days later with temps in the teens and twenties, and still looking good.  The temperature is going to remain cool the next few days and I have not seen any of the catkins release their pollen yet. 

On this plant the red sigmas are the little red dot on the end of the bud.

This is another plant with the female flower has emerged about half way out of the bud.

I like this picture showing a closeup of a catkin that has elongated, and if you look in the back ground you can just make out the red female flower starting to appear.

Every spring I check each plant for the dreaded fungal disease EFB ( Eastern Filbert Blight) which will gradually kill the whole plant.

I usually find a few plants with EFB which I remove or cut the infected stems down to the ground.

If that plant produces a good tasting large round nut, I will just remove the infected stems and all the catkins (male flowers). I will try to hand pollinate these plants, if I have the time, with a hazelnut that's resistant to EFB.

I'm finding fewer plants every year that seem to be susceptible to EFB so my process of eliminating the infected plants seems to be working.

Winter 2022 Snow & Cold

 Winter 2022 will be another good test of hardiness for the hazelnuts. With the cold, deep snow the rabbits and deer are doing some real damage this year.

This fall started with some damage from a buck. I was a little lazy this year and should have fenced off some of the best hazelnut plants that are out side the orchard fence.

This is another one I usually fence off for the winter. I would remove these damaged stems now but most of those large stem contain a large number of catkins (male flowers) that will release a lot of pollen in the spring.  So right after the hazelnuts shed their pollen in March I'll remove the damaged stems at the bottom. 

These stems on this plant have no catkins so I'll remove them at ground level as soon the snow melts.

This rabbit damage just happen this last month. This is more of a bush type plant with smaller stems and suckers that rabbits really like.  The deer also removed all the catkins and buds on the remaining branches, so this plant will, most likely, have hardly any nuts. I have been putting a cage around this plant, because it does have a large nut, but the shell is too thick, hard to crack, and the kernel is too small.

The plant here has one of my favorite nuts which has a medium size nut with a thin shell, and a good taste. It is also a small bushy plant with small stems that rabbits like. I did clone this plant and I'm growing it inside the orchard fence where it produces a nice crop every year.

My son, Bryce, took some drone pictures of the orchard and the two new areas I just finish fencing off this fall. The fence is a little hard to see but you can see the corner posts.

This is another done picture of the original orchard that was started in 2000. I was surprised that the 100 hazelnut plants hardly show up, and the large ash and pine trees are very visible.

It pays to fence off the hazelnut plants. The plants here have no damage from the rabbits and the deer haven't removed any of the catkins. The plants on the left are all  layered clones of some of my best plants and the ones on the right are hand pollinated full-siblings.

These are hazelnut plants in the older part of the orchard. I've removed over 100 plants that were not suitable with small, thick shell, bad tasting nuts, and not resistant to Eastern Filbert Blight. I then filled the open areas with clones or full sibs.

This year I've covered the green house with black plastic to keep the snow from blowing in the vents. The temperature has been more constant and never drops below zero. I thought I might store plants in the green house for the winter, but on a sunny day the temp raises to over 50º F which would cause the plants to break dormancy. 

While visiting Corvallis, Oregon I noticed even more hazelnuts fields when we were on the way to and from the airport. This was the last week in January and they were just starting to flower and shed their pollen. If you look closely, the ground is yellow from the pollen.

In this field the hazelnut are about 5 years old and 4 to 5 feet tall. The field was so large I could not see the ends of the rows.

The picture here shows some older mature hazelnut plants. These plants had frost on the branches which looks nice but I wonder if that hinders the release of pollen.

 

I wanted to end with a picture that was more green and not so black and white. I like this picture of the   hazelnut's green leafy bracts called a involucre (husk) with red hairs.