Hazelnuts

I have just resigned from my job of 16 years as my husband is a sick OEF veteran(Afghanistan). We have moved to the mountains of NC as it helps his breathing.
For the first time in my life, I have time to start growing a vegetable garden and I also want to plant many hazelnut trees/shrubs/trubs. TN forestry sells them in season but please, how big is a seedling?
We would like something that could start producing within a couple to a few years. I would like quite a few trees. This is all new to me as I moved to the mountains on June the 9th. Anyone's help and guidance will be greatly appreciated.

We have hazelnuts but they're trees. It would take decades to get to their size. I would suggest planting some as well as apples and what ever other fruits do well in your climate. But also plant annuals and perennials like asparagus. The annuals are your near time crop, the thinks like raspberries and asparagus soon, tree crops long term.

Walter Jeffries wrote:We have hazelnuts but they're trees. It would take decades to get to their size. I would suggest planting some as well as apples and what ever other fruits do well in your climate. But also plant annuals and perennials like asparagus.
The annuals are your near time crop, the thinks like raspberries and asparagus soon, tree crops long term.

I have planted during spring break 8 blueberries, 5 raspberries, 14 fruit trees ( 4 apples, 2 peaches, 2 pears, 2 or 4 plums, 2 cherries). We also have many wild blackberries. I have been walking around and I believe I have 3 hickory trees and 2 young black walnut trees.
I have also started a late raised garden which is growing.
Last but not least, we have 6 chickens, 2 pygmy goats for fertilizer and 5 rabbits, not counting 1 cat and 3 dogs.
We have tomatoes, bell peppers, hot peppers, beans, snow peas, zucchini, squash growing and some herbs. I have never thought about the asparagus. I remember once, 20 years ago, I had bought some and cooked it for ever and never could quite eat it!
How long does the hazelnut tree take to grow to a fruit producing size?
I think I might have a couple growing wild...but the leaves have a weird thing in the middle like a wart...

first 2 hazelnut I believe
3rd black walnut?

Also, is the picture of a hickory?

pictures 1 and two appear to be hazelnuts
they usually take 4-5 years to have nuts
they cam be grown as a single stem tree or as a multistem bush
they can be coppiced (cut down the stems and new ones will sprout) and used as poles, walking sticks. etc

the third picture is a black walnut
the fourth is a hickory, maybe a pignut hickory
a tree identification book, like "Peterson Field Guide -Eastern Trees" is well work the investment

Thank you so much. Between rain showers I went outside and located 2 more hazelnut trees loaded with little nuts. I will look up for Peterson's field guide at Amazon. I have just received Foster and Duke's Eastern/Central Medicinal plants and herbs, which is quite fascinating:) I thought I needed to know what safe things to get for my rabbits:)

Has anyone had good results from planting nut trees from seed? It seems a cheap way to grow lots of trees if you have the time.

I left a pile of black walnuts in my yard over the winter (didn't get around to cleaning off and curing that last batch...), and now I have little walnut seedlings popping up just about everywhere I look. Super cheap and easy way to plant trees, if you ask me. I'm thinking I might leave several piles of different nuts out this winter and let the squirrels plant 'em for me!

Those first two pictures look to me like witch hazel Hamamelis virginiana(the name comes from it's similar appearance to hazelnut). If it has a "wart" in the leaves that's witch hazel, the bump supposedly looks like a witches hat. Hazelnuts have doubly serrated leaf edges, like a sawblade.

i didn't see this thread when I posted a hazelnut thread on the permies thread, I planted 6 hazelnuts about 3 or 4 years ago, just sticks, they grew like wildfire and this year they have lots of nuts on them, I'm thrilled.

ONly 4 of the 6 have nuts on them, I got 4 from one nursery and 2 from another also neighbor put in two from arbor day..so we have some cross pollination.

Mine are in what someone on the other (permie) thread called the ravioli stage..here in Michigan, the first nuts that they have produced so I'm excited, but yeah, they produced really fast..I'm thinking of taking cuttings from these trees and moving them out into other areas of the property as well...after I see how good the nuts are that they produced this year

www.badgersett.com has bush hazelnuts with improved nut production.

I picked my first 36 hazelnuts off of my few baby trees today and they are small but very tasty and easy to crack..there are about half the crop still on the bushes not quite ripe yet so these were early ones..the bushes are barely 3 years out..expecting larger ones on the rest that aren't ripe yet, and hopefully more next year than this year (we had horrible droughts and frosts)..but I was pleased to have something in only 3 years.

LOL, last year I picked my first hazel "crop"... a whopping 15 nuts! The shrub was 3 years old. This year it looks like the crop may double. It's in poor soil, not in a good spot, and it probably has too large a root system now to move. I'll be planting more, for sure.

I just finished picking up my fifth bag of hazelnuts from two trees. I like using the net bag you get oranges in. these allow plenty of air for the nuts to dry.
the trees are about 20 years old.
mr squirrel throws them on the ground and I pick them up.
I leave plenty for him and his friends the chipmonks , bluejays and others
I have a third tree closer to the woods which I pretty much leave to them.

I merged your stuff with the following thread. I hope that is okay by you.

I have just resigned from my job of 16 years as my husband is a sick OEF veteran(Afghanistan). We have moved to the mountains of NC as it helps his breathing.
For the first time in my life, I have time to start growing a vegetable garden and I also want to plant many hazelnut trees/shrubs/trubs. TN forestry sells them in season but please, how big is a seedling?
We would like something that could start producing within a couple to a few years. I would like quite a few trees. This is all new to me as I moved to the mountains on June the 9th. Anyone's help and guidance will be greatly appreciated.

happy Hazelnuts grow very quickly..I put in 6 seedlings a few years ago and they produced catkins the last 2 years (no nuts cause we had some horrible spring freezes)..they require cross pollination

Thank you:) On another topic I posted pictures of some of the trees I have and there were some hazelnuts! So now I walk around and look carefully, since I know what to look for. This morning I discovered several with many little nuts on them!! It is so exciting! Tomorrow I will go exploring some more. It has become a treasure hunt!

Hi, I also live in the NC mountains and plan on growing lots of hazelnuts. For this year we are going to harvest the abundant supply of beaked and american wild hazelnuts. This fall we'll be planting a couple blight resistant european hazels from Useful Plants Nursery out of Black Mountain. Starting next year we will begin ordering hybrid Hazels from Badgersett. They have done intensive breeding work for at least 20 years to make the most productive blight resistant hybrids.

Good Luck!

I planted several types of blight resistant/immune hazelnuts (filberts, really) at our place in the Triangle region of NC. they grew well and started to produce by their second and third years. Unfortunately, we moved before they really started to produce in quantity...

My plants came from Raintree Nursery (raintreenursery.com). They were about 2 feet tall when they arrived. They put on 2-4 feet a year for the first several years if they get sufficient moisture during the warm season.

The leaves are also good rabbit feed

Thank you so much Kay and Osker. I would love to keep in touch with both of you as we embark on our hazelnut journey!
Osker, where in the mountains are you? We are in Sparta.
I believe I have located another place in NC that carried Hazelnuts. Foggy mountain nursery in Creston which is by West Jefferson.
I looked at useful plant nursery and in a 3 gallon pot, it is still a seedling! How big is a seedling?
What did you buy and how big was it?
I might need more guidance too for badgersett. The prices are low but they have seedlings. Do you have any experience in their products? I like the lifetime warranty on some of the products:)
As for raintreenursery, 5-3 foot trees for 59.95 doesn't sound bad at all. Kay, is that what you bought?

By "seedling" they might mean it is grown from seed rather than grafted, and not be talking about the size of the plant.....

We live down near the Asheville area, but we used to live in Lansing, which is quite close to you! We used to live about 1/4 mile from Foggy Mountain nursery, and while the owner is a very nice guy with great prices, his main focus is christmas trees and my experience with his other stock was hit or miss. I would still definitely recommend visiting him and at the least getting a few of his $4 blueberries, because I don't think that price can be beat.

As Tyler said, the seedlings listed on Useful Plants site were simply started from seed, whereas the named varieties listed below are asexually propagated. I have purchased other plants from them, but not hazelnuts. I was planning on buying some of the named Euro hazels from them, but as time goes on I don't know if I can afford their prices. They are really good people, but their plants are expensive. Raintree's prices are much better, but they're in Oregon, and I'm tryin to keep it local.

I have purchased hazelnuts from Badgersett, but not plants. Their plants are first year seedlings. I believe they sell them at around 3-4 months old. So they will definitely take longer to give a sizeable yield, but after much searching, they seem to be the source of the most promising hazel plants.

peace

Valerie Bass wrote:Thank you so much Kay and Osker. I would love to keep in touch with both of you as we embark on our hazelnut journey!

As for raintreenursery, 5-3 foot trees for 59.95 doesn't sound bad at all. Kay, is that what you bought?

I just took a look at their website again and it looks like that price/quantity is for their "hedgerow". I bought one each of individual varieties (Santiam, Yamhill, Lewis and Clark, if I recall). Delta is one I haven't tried, but if it is a blight immune variety, it may be a good choice.

I believe most of the varieties of hazels that Raintree sells are layered plants (on their own roots). I see one in particular though, Santiam, that is grafted. In this case, I prefer the trees on their own roots, since hazels do tend to sucker. Keeping track of suckers and separating them off would give you more grafting rootstock, though.

Hope this helps!

i've been looking into getting RAW nuts to try to start some. experimental, maybe wont work, and for sure they would need to be TOTALLY raw.
but its a thought i have had, to try it out, would be way way cheaper than buying plants, or even seeds. i've found some sites online where you can buy totally raw nuts for a pretty good price.

recently bought a small amount of hazelnut seeds am starting them off in my neighbors fridge, hope it goes well.
...and been trying to find some hazelnut in the wild, so far no joy....and its not a plant i would recognize easily...cause i am not yet that acquainted with it...but if i go out at the right time of year...i know there should be some wild hazelnut somewhere.

https://permies.com/w/hazelnuts