Fall Colors

The fall colors vary from green to gold to red.

Fall/Winter Update

I'm finally posting an update about our fall harvest! Hazelnuts started to be picked starting in mid to late-August and ending by mid-September. The ripening varies because of the wide variety of plants that are planted in our "test" orchard.

 Dan collecting hazelnuts

Each bunch is picked and put in a bag.

Drying out the freshly picked hazelnuts in their husks.

After they dry out in their husks, many of the nuts will fall out of the husks when they are dry.

 Bags and bags of hazelnuts were picked.

Drying out the hazelnuts

After the nuts are separated from the husk they are continued to be dried down in mesh bags for a couple more weeks.

Lots of nuts!

Planting Information

If you recently bought one of our plants. Here is a fact sheet that will help in planting. You can always contact us at riverbendhazelnuts@gmail.com for more detailed planting information. 

HYBRID HAZELNUTS

 from Dan Johnson at Riverbend Hazelnuts

Grows as a shrub 6 to 10 feet tall, and will make a wonderful edible hedge. Has a round shape with dark green foliage.

Prefers full sun, but will tolerate some shade.

In the fall they will turn a striking mixture of red, yellow, orange, and green.

When established will tolerate droughts and floods.

The nuts are a good source of protein and vitamins, and can be eaten raw or roasted.

These hybrid hazelnuts are a cross between commercial hazelnuts, and the wild American hazelnut growing in this area.

Planting information

Plant 2 plants for pollination, about 5 to 20 feet apart.

Plant about ½ inch deeper than the root ball (leftover nut), and water immediately.

Water once a week when dry during the first year.

The nut is still attached to the root ball, so squirrels and mice will dig up the plant and eat the nut. (protect the plant)

Harvesting

In about 3-4 years you will be able to harvest the nut clusters at the end of August.

In a nutshell, hybrid hazelnuts are a great choice for northern gardeners.

Growing hazelnuts - Seedlings for sale

After we taste test the hazelnuts, and look at all its various characteristics (non-suckering, thin-shelled nut, good taste ect.), we choose the best ones and plant them.

To grow hazelnuts from seed, they need to be stratified (undergo a period of cold temperature) in order to germinate. This can be done in two ways. You can just plant the hazelnuts outside in the fall and let nature do the work for you, or to get a jump-start on growing, you can store the nuts in the fridge for about 1-2 months and plant them indoors. There are many ways to store them. Recently we have tried putting the nuts in ziploc bags with damp moss and stored them for about 2 months. That seemed to work fairly well. After a period of cold termpatures, the nuts can be warmed up and planted. All the nuts were planted in a sandy potting soil mix and set under grow lights.

We planted lots of nuts in a variety of containers.

 This was about a month after taking them out of cold storage. (April, 2014)

Planting them early will give you a jump-start on growth. Otherwise if they are planted directly outside, these seeds wouldn't germinate and pop above ground until June. 

We had over 200 of these seedlings this spring. We have started selling them, since we have run out of room to plant them. These seedlings are selected from the plants with the best qualities. However, they are open pollinated, so they could end up with a variety of characteristics. We hope to try more clonal propagation techniques this year, and be able to start selling clones of the best plants. 

We still have about 40 more seedlings left for sale.

They are $5 per plant. 

Contact us at riverbendhazelnuts@gmail.com for more information.

Taste Testing

After the hazelnuts are all picked, they need to be dried down for a few weeks. For the best varieties of hazelnuts the nuts will fall right out of the husks, so those nuts can just be put in a paper bag and set in a cool, dry location. 

For the hazelnuts that don't drop right out of the husks, the nuts will have to be dehusked. This involves pulling apart the husks and getting the nuts out. It really varies from plant to plant for how hard they are to get out the husks. Luckily, the bad ones are usually the hard ones to get out the husks, so we usually skip those. Those have really thick husks and can be really juicy. The juice tends to sting any cuts one your hands. Some even have some sticky sap-like residue on the outside. This makes dehusking those a real pain.
We definitely want to select plants that fall easily out of the husk, avoiding the dehusking step altogether. 

After they dry down in a cool, dry location for a few weeks, we can start taste-testing the nuts!

All we do is go through each bag, cracking the nuts, and seeing how they taste.

 We carefully take notes of the taste, how thick the shell is, and the size of the nut and meat.

Wow. These looked like they were big hazelnuts from the outside, but look how thick that shell is!

There are always new plants that pop up from squirrels planting them around the yard. Sometimes we include these on our lists as well. You never know what you might get!

Harvest

OK. I am finally updating. I meant to update during harvest, but things just got busy.

We had a very good crop this year! Lots of nuts from lots of trees. I think the hot pepper spray is working its magic on the squirrels.

On the last post I talked about how to tell if the nuts are ready to be picked. Here is an example showing pushing on them with your thumb and seeing if they roll out. (I can't get the pictures side-by-side, if you know how, let me know)

 These nuts are ready to be picked!

We harvested hazelnuts until about mid-September. There is such a wide range of genetic diversity for the different hybrids that they all ripen at different times. If we just had one or two of all the same kind then we would only have to harvest them for a week and then we would be done! 

Dan did most of the hazelnut picking, with me coming out to help on a couple weekends. I estimate that he had over 200 (small paper) bags, each from a different tree. 

Here are some pictures of the hazelnut picking process.

Dan pulling the branches of the hazelnut down to a reachable height.

Searching the branches for nuts. You have to look really carefully at each branch because they will really blend in.

Found one!

A couple of bags full of nice looking hazelnuts

 Here is the fancy hazelnut picking cart with all the essentials: Bags, notebooks, label supplies, water for the pickers...

Dan showing off one of the hazelnuts he's working on picking.

The next post I'll talk about the best part of the hazelnut growing process... the taste-testing!

...and so the battle begins!

The hazelnuts are just starting to ripen!

Now we just need to collect them before the squirrels can get to them. We started spraying them last week with our hot pepper spray, (see August 17, 2012 post for recipe), which seems to help deter the squirrels from completely wiping out he hazelnut crop. My dad has also been live-trapping the squirrels and moving them (hopefully) far enough away so they don't come back. Going over a couple rivers helps as well.

Above is just a few of the various different hazelnuts we have. They come in all shapes and sizes as you can see by the husks, and they will ripen at different times as well (from now until mid-September, depending on the variety). The middle picture shows them just starting to ripen. You can see them turning a tannish brown color. However, color is not usually the best way to tell if they are ripe. You can see if they are ripe by putting your thumb on the end of the hazelnut and pushing sideways. If they are ripe they will come right out. If not, they will stay attached to the back of the husk. We usually test a few hazelnuts from all over the bush and if they all come out then we can collect the whole plant.

Dan starting collecting hazelnuts this weekend, and I will be going out to help sometime this week, so more pictures of the hazelnut collecting process will be posted shortly.

Just for fun, can you spot where the hazelnuts are on this plant?? They blend right in!

Here is just a few of them circled!! It takes a lot of moving of the branches to spot all of them.

Just for comparison, here is what they hazelnuts looked like on June 16. They start out so tiny!