Hazelnuts in the Desert

I have been on the lookout for a staple tree crop for arid areas that can also take the frosts of high elevation. The staple crop must have high calories, be perennial and bear every year. I think I have arrived on a promising species in the California hazelnut https://plants.usda.gov/home/plantProfile?symbol=COCOC. According the USDA, it can tolerate precipitation as low as 14 inches annually and is hardy down to -23 F. I originally thought I could live off pinyon nuts, but apparently they only produce every 5-7 years and the nut doesn't have that long of a shelf life. The California hazelnut could fill that calorie/time gap and be planted in the understory of pinyon/juniper woodlands. In an open or low elevation areas, it could be planted under honey locusts or honey mesquite.

The only problem is I cannot find the tree nor it's seeds for sale. Does anyone know where to get this tree? Does anyone have one growing? Anyone want to share the nuts?

I asked Mr. Google, who said this:

They only have the 1 gallon size:

https://nativefoodsnursery.com/california-hazelnut/

Yeah I saw that, gallon pots would be astronomical shipping costs if you got any more than 2 and you would need large numbers to actually feed yourself. I guess what I am  really asking where I can get 25+ at a price that won't destroy the bank.

Have you looked for the "western beaked hazelnut?"
Same plant less fancy name.

Does Colorado have a state nursery?  State nurseries are usually the best places to find trees at a reasonable price.

Those are also the best trees to buy because they grow in your state.

If they do offer any hazelnuts it might be likely that they may not ship until fall.

These state nurseries are often very popular so trees sell out fast.  Find the date they will ship the trees and place an order early.

It seems they're pretty much just beaked hazels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corylus_cornuta
Looking at the range map from wikipedia They grow wild in a small area of north central colorado. These folks might have them, or at least know where to get them.
There's also the possibility that wikipedia's map is wrong and you've got them growing wild all over your area. Might be worth taking a wander and seeing if you can spot some later into june or july. I find they like the edges of logging roads where I am, and their nuts are quite distinctive because of the "beak" on them:

Word to the wise - bring gloves! Those little prickly hairs on them suck to get on your hands.

hi, i'm new here and your post got me to sign up since i had the same question. i'm in southern new mexico, zone 8a, and i just ordered 5 american hazelnuts from arborday.org with some coupon codes so it worked out to $11.89 per tree. i have no idea how it will go but i like experimenting and with 5 i can try them out in different microclimates around my property. also, thanks to leila for being the only person on the internet i found growing hazelnuts in the desert and gave me the confidence to try this.

Michele, welcome to the forum.

Thank you for sharing where you got the hazelnuts and the price.

thanks, anne! looking forward to participating!
(not sure if this is the right way to reply but oh well i'll learn)

i was too hasty placing an order with arborday.org. i thought they were the trusted nonprofit i recall as a kid but they currently have a lot of negative reviews, sending poor specimens or nothing at all or a different species altogether and being difficult to deal with regarding replacements or refunds. i'm trying to cancel my order now.

i don't want to steer anyone into a bad situation so please do better due diligence than i did. sorry!

i'm looking into twisted tree farm for next year.  

I have to agree with Mike Fullerton, the best we can do is order beaked hazelnuts in bulk and hope that one or two have the genetics necessary to live in arid conditions and then propagate the survivors. That's what I am doing, ordering 25 from Burnt Ridge Nursery and placing them in a arroyo, fortify them with stone check dams, and co-plant with fast growing nitrogen fixers - honey and New Mexico locust and Russian Olive. If anyone in the dry Western US has kept hazelnuts for seed, could you please let us know? There is a market available for those valuable genetics.

For another note, Turkish Hazelnuts look promising since Turkey is dry, but I can't find any information on their minimum amount of precipitation. Anyone try those in dry areas?

I'm in Colorado Springs. In one of the foothill valleys I found wild/naturalized hazelnuts but there weren't mature seeds.
I ordered the select seedlings from here:
https://www.forestag.com/collections/hazelnuts
I think they're bred in Wisconsin so who knows how well they're suited to this climate but since they're all seedlings I have a decent chance of getting some that are better suited for here.
I have them on drip irrigation and lots of wood chip mulch. They were planted last spring so they're only 18" tall and haven't produced anything. One made catkins that overwintered but of course they need cross pollination.
I planted 15 (gave the others away), 10 in the back and 5 in the front. The 5 in the front yard seem to be doing best. The wood chips are 6+ inches thick and had a winter to break down. They also get afternoon shade in that location. The 10 in the back yard get morning shade, afternoon full sun, and probably more like 2" of wood chips.

I would definitely recommend a semi-shaded location, particularly afternoon sun. They're absolutely going to need watering initially and maybe perpetually. Oh, and lots of mulch. I need to get another truck load of wood chips.

There's my experience, such as it is. Take it for whatever it's worth.
Daniel

Daniel Kaplan wrote:I'm in Colorado Springs. In one of the foothill valleys I found wild/naturalized hazelnuts but there weren't mature seeds.

*heavy breathing* w-w-where? Like exactly where. Also, best of luck to your hazelnut orchard. Will you please tell us about its survivability next year?

Skyler Weber wrote:
*heavy breathing* w-w-where? Like exactly where. Also, best of luck to your hazelnut orchard. Will you please tell us about its survivability next year?

There's a bear creek trailhead at 26th and gold camp rd. Gold camp has a hairpin turn there. You head up the hiking road to the 666 trail. The trail was rerouted so it stays exclusively on the south slope of the valley. It used to run along the very bottom of that valley and that's where the hazelnuts were. Probably within 20 yards of the stream. There are some tiny waterfalls in that area. If you're local we should meet up. PM me.

I would highly recommend not limiting yourself to the beaked hazel.  Try some of the commercial corylus avellana varieties, as well as hazelberts, even turkish tree hazel.   I'm in zone 6 in AK, (although its 6b- slightly warmer than yours) and the european hazelnuts grow quite well here, and have a lot of frost tolerance in flowers and leaves- the flowers naturally grow in the late winter, oddly.   I've had flowers but still no nuts.  The European hazelnut seems like a very tough plant that will grow in a big range of climates.  We get around 26 inches of rain/ year here, but we frequently have a 2 month spell in summer with less than an inch, and the hazelnuts have been troopers through the droughts.   I've definitely had some surprises trying out different plants here, some things i thought would thrive didn't, (like manchurian apricots) and others I thought wouldn't thrive did. (like butternut- still waiting on nuts though).  I think it may be worth your while researching the huge variety of nut bearing pine species as well, some may bear more regularly and pines tend to be tough and widely adapted beyond their native range, though taking a  long time to mature.   (I've been tending about 20 korean nut pine trees for 5 or 6 years now  from little plugs and some have just reached waist high, though with your intense sun they should grow faster- your main limitation i would think is moisture).

here's what i've learned so far from my desert hazelnut experiment this year:
the 4 european hazelnuts didn't make it even though they were in a protected location, heavily mulched and on a drip. the leaves couldn't handle our dry winds, crisped up and died.

3 out of eight american hazelnuts established and look happy.

at the end of the season i planted 4 "the beast" american x european hybrids and 4 "grand traverse" turkish x european hybrids. all eight seem to have taken but there is a bit of leaf crisping. we'll see how they handle summers here next year.

so far it looks to me like the american hazels are the most tolerant of my high desert conditions.

First time poster, long time lurker on this forum; I have a small mixed cultivar Hazelnut [Filbert] orchard on the Oregon Coast (so, prime Filbert country on the 45th parallel.) Anyways, many cultivars of Filbert sucker profusely, but I dig down around the base of the tree in late winter and prune off any suckers, and especially keep those with their own roots. This is a great way to build your filbert orchard. Anyways, I would be happy to ship some suckers (with roots) to people looking to experiment [minus the cost of shipping and maybe an equally happy plant exchange]. My current cultivars are Jefferson, Doris, Gamma (a pollinator), and Yamhill. The Jefferson's are the easiest to propagate as they sucker the most and grow fairly quick.

I planted an American Hazlenut last year (high desert, NM, 6000 ft, 8a).  I planted in the spring and was surprised that it established quite well and was looking happy by fall.  However, it did not come back at all this spring.  I think our lowest temperature last winter was 8 degrees on one weird, stupidly cold night, but we're usually not below about 20.  I'm not sure exactly what got it.

I got my hazelnut from Northern Ridge Nursery on Etsy, and have gotten a lot of things from them that have largely been nice, healthy specimens.  They're pretty cheap if you order enough things to get free shipping (over $35, I think).  The only thing is, they have different stuff in at different times, so you can't always get what you're looking for.  Just looked, and they do have a website as well.  Their pricing has gone up, along with everything else.  I've ordered a good handful of things from them and felt all were worth the price I paid.  A bunch of them have died, but I'm trialing things in a "hostile environment", lol, so it's to be expected.  I have also had a lot of successes.  I have apples, pecans, and rugosa roses from them that are doing great.  I find that Etsy, in general, is a great place to find permaculture plants and things that can be difficult to come by elsewhere.

One thing to look into... I read a thread about hazelnuts not producing once you got so far south.  Not sure where CO fits into that scheme, but it might be worth researching before planting.

https://permies.com/w/hazelnuts

Results from my 15 hazels at the end of the second growing season.
As a lot of people seem to have found, it was a hard growing season. I think I for sure lost a second hazel. Most of the 10 (now 8) in back looked poorly. I had a lot of leaf edges crisping up and some leaf loss. One or two that looked like they died now have green buds, presumably ready for next year. I assume they grew taller but I don't know how much.

Of the 5 hazels in from, 3 have catkins ready for next spring. (1 of them had a catkin or two this spring). I'm hoping that means I might have a few nuts set on next year. One of the ones in front without catkins has bushed out a lot with new shoots.

I nearly put up shade cloth over the garden this year. Might have given a better harvest if I had. The hazels in front with afternoon shade did much better than those with only morning shade.  I'm reminded that hazels are an understory specie so I'm thinking that they'd like more shade, particularly in our semiarid and very sunny climate. I'm hoping to grow orache, sunflowers, and my going-to-seed carrots around the backyard hazels next year. In theory the apple trees should shade the hazels eventually but I need a few years of shade in the mean time.
DK

I planted two "Beast" (Corylus aveliana x americana OSU)  and two American Hazelnut (corylus americana) last spring here in Northern New Mexico, seems like a lot of folks in this general area did a similiar thing. I will post update on their progress when it warms up!

Sandy

I'm late to this part my, but wanted to see how everyone hazelnuts are doing?
I ordered 20 of them from TyTy nursery in Georgia and mine are thriving! They also have tons of coupons and the delivery was stellar.  I'm outside of Santa Fe, about 13 inches of rain a year, zone 6b.  It's their 1st year so I'm still watering but so far, so good.
Would love to hear how others are doing.
Thanks!

All four of mine made it through the winter and are looking good!

Sandy

update on growing hazelnuts in the southern new mexico desert zone 8a:
about half of everything planted made it through one of the worst unrelenting triple digit summers last year and came back this spring looking happy. i'm not seeing crispy leaves this year even though we're in triple digits again.
i now have 3 corylus americana, 2 "the beast" and 2 "grand traverse".
the beast produced a catkin and one of the grand traverse has its first nuts.
it's very exciting and i really didn't expect that much from this experiment. i'm amazed that they are producing in the 2nd yr and just 30 miles north of the border.

Hello, I was interested in this thread as many people seem to be trying to grow hazelnuts in New Mexico and Colorado in cold climates. I live in Colorado at about 8000 ft and even though I can find information that suggests hazelnut and Hazelberts can survive to zone 3 or even 2 , I wondered how the high elevation might affect them? Also how do they handle last season frost as our growing season can be quite short some years.

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I'm sure y'all know that hazelnut spread far & wide after the ice sheets retreated + specialised into diverse pockets.  I've seen chaparral/ forests of them even in drier parts of Catalunya, where many domesticated varieties originate.  There are those pesky problems of late winter-blooming wind-pollinated catkins, the need for at least judicious water, & all the rodents + birds ahead in line.  They are one of eleven crops for least space in the complete nutrition garden, & Tom Molnar at Rutgers is breeding filbert-blight resistant cultivars!

I've linked this before in case others still interested.  There does not appear to be any 2025 entries just now, but there is contact information for possible hazelnut stock.  Varieties are hybrids from North Dakota/Minnesota wild stock and more domesticated gene pool.  Don't know if the proprietor is still selling, but shoud be cold hardy (zone 3/4).....don't know about altitude tolerance.

https://www.facebook.com/riverbendhazelnuts

Anyone growing hazelnut in Arizona?