How quickly can I propagate hazelnuts?

I'm determining how many hazelnuts to purchase for my living fence.  My desired final amount is 35 plants (on a 3' spacing).  If that spacing is horribly incorrect, please let me know

I think I'll buy them from Badgersett in "tubeling" form.  They seem to be a good hybrid hazelnut with a nice price tag.  

I believe the only ways to propagate them is by air layering, burying a branch or planting a nut.  I'm not sure if cuttings root as well as air layering.  I'm just basing this off of a fairly detailed Hybrid Hazelnut PDF from Badgersett.

So, should I just buy 35 tubelings?  Or get 12 and propagate them to fill in the spaces?  If so, how long until I'd have the holes in the fence planted?  

Thanks for any guidance anyone can provide!

The hazelnuts that I've grown sucker like crazy. Perhaps plant them, let them grow for a few moths, then run over them with the lawn mower. I bet that each plant would send up a half-dozen shoots. Chop them apart the next spring, and transplant to their desired location. Maybe you let them grow a full season in their initial location before chopping them off in early spring... Some variation on that theme seems about right to me. Maybe you chop down the mother trees once a year, until you get your hedge fully populated.

Thanks Joseph!  I was hoping these hybrid ones would sucker but from what they say (buried in the PDF) they generally don't sucker.  They send up many shoots from the roots in the same spot.  From that I got the impression that unless I wanted to try to spade the root ball in half, I wouldn't be able to count on suckering for propagation.

Mike Jay wrote:Thanks Joseph!  I was hoping these hybrid ones would sucker but from what they say (buried in the PDF) they generally don't sucker.  They send up many shoots from the roots in the same spot.  From that I got the impression that unless I wanted to try to spade the root ball in half, I wouldn't be able to count on suckering for propagation.

I would use regular wood working tools rather than a spade. Saws. Lopers, etc...  They just need a piece of stem with a root and a leaf-bud. Life wants to live. We tend to be way too delicate with propagules.

Mike Jay wrote:I'm determining how many hazelnuts to purchase for my living fence.  

I think I'll buy them from Badgersett in "tubeling" form.  They seem to be a good hybrid hazelnut with a nice price tag.  

Thanks for any guidance anyone can provide!

Hi Mike,

I can't recall how far north you are in Wisconsin, but if you are doing your first plantings this year, perhaps also consider contacting this producer (below).  I think he has hybrid stock for sale as well  that has been adapted for many years near Fargo, ND.  Note that he used Badgersett stock, but hybridized that stock with local wild hazelnut accessions to get genes adapted for the region.....and the cold!.

http://riverbendhazelnuts.blogspot.com/p/introduction.html

That would be more aggressive than I was expecting to be...  I will definitely consider it.  Or I'll wimp out and not want to hurt my new little babies....

Assuming, just for the sake of argument, that I do wimp out and I don't take a saw to my new shrubs, how long would normal propagation take?

Hi John, I'm fairly far north but still in zone 4.  Badgersett says their hybrids are stone cold hardy for my area so I think I'm ok in that respect.

I think layering would work great for you. If your hazelnuts plants get any branches that you can bend over to the ground then it should work. This would also be a gentler approach to spreading them. Here is a wiki article talking about this technique: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layering

Here is a more detailed article: https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/plant-propagation-by-layering-instructions-for-the-home-gardener

I have used this technique with coppiced trees to quickly expand the plot. Nice thing is if the branches on you hazelnuts are long enough you might be able to get the spacing you are wanting without having to transplant later.

Hope that helps!

Thanks Deron, that's good info.  If I had to guess then, it would take 3 years to have the intermediate hazelnuts growing on their own.

Year 1: I plant the tubelings and they get 2' high
Year 2: They get 4'-5' high
Year 3: During the early spring I layer two branches from each bush to opposing sides.  By the end of that year they are hopefully self sufficient tiny bushes.  

Or for $200 more I just buy all the plants I need and use layering to make more for other places.  Then I'm 2 years ahead on my fence....  Decisions, decisions.

Yup, it will take a bit of time. Depends on how fast you need them all to be growing. The other thing to think about is if there are other projects you can work on while you wait for the hazelnuts to grow. Perhaps that $200 could be used for other projects? But of course if the hazelnuts are worth it to you then go for the quick option. Always lots to balance when working on projects!

On my farm, I value diversity. So I would prefer lots of genetically different plants rather than cloning a smaller number of plants.

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:
On my farm, I value diversity. So I would prefer lots of genetically different plants rather than cloning a smaller number of plants.

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:
The hazelnuts that I've grown sucker like crazy. Perhaps plant them, let them grow for a few moths, then run over them with the lawn mower. I bet that each plant would send up a half-dozen shoots. Chop them apart the next spring, and transplant to their desired location.

Won't the shoots just be clones since they are from the same root stocks? Seems like using layering or transplanting suckers would have the same results in terms of genetic variation.

I am just starting on hazelnut propagation. This was helpful. Just wondering how it went with your living fence?  I may do something similar around our community road on the edge of DNR clear cut.  Would love to see pictures of your Hazel plants from all of you. especially the living fence.

Daron Williams wrote:Won't the shoots just be clones since they are from the same root stocks?

Hazelnuts require an unrelated pollinator. So if a single variety is cloned, they may not get pollinated properly. If nut production is desired, a best-practice might be to clone a number of unrelated varieties, and then inter-plant them. Perhaps grow a number of different clones from seeds.

I ended up getting screwed over by Badgersett.  They never sent me the plants I bought.  So the next year (last spring) I got bare root hazelnuts from Forest Agriculture Nursery (Mark Sheppard's business).  The plants were beautiful and had huge root balls.  They took right off despite a drought and I barely watered them.  This year they're starting to sucker a bit and are about 3' high.  

Thanks for reminding me about this thread Julie, I'll bend some branches down to root next spring.  I've also heard that if you dig down with a spade two feet away from a plant like a hazelnut, the severed half of the root will panic and send up a shoot.  So that might be a good option for propagation as well...

Mike Jay wrote:I ended up getting screwed over by Badgersett.  They never sent me the plants I bought.  So the next year (last spring) I got bare root hazelnuts from Forest Agriculture Nursery (Mark Sheppard's business).  The plants were beautiful and had huge root balls.  They took right off despite a drought and I barely watered them.  This year they're starting to sucker a bit and are about 3' high.  

Thanks for reminding me about this thread Julie, I'll bend some branches down to root next spring.  I've also heard that if you dig down with a spade two feet away from a plant like a hazelnut, the severed half of the root will panic and send up a shoot.  So that might be a good option for propagation as well...

You are very welcome Mike and thanks so much for the tips and pictures. I will try the " spade two feet away" idea on some here. I am so excited to find so many wild hazels with nuts on them. (I will try to take pics and share here).  Now if I can beat the squirrels to them.

I have learned so much reading (watching all the videos) on this and other threads to help me get started on growing hazelnuts.:

* Wind pollinated.
* Needing unrelated varieties to make nuts (I have cultivated and wild both).
* And the layering to clone being more reliable then planting seeds. I imagine the 2 kinds I have have already crossed and planting seeds would not be as consistent as cloning a good producer.

Did you try the saw dust filled bucket for squirrel assisted harvest yet? Or harvesting while the coats are still green to finish ripening in-doors?

Big thanks to all... especially you Mike for starting it.

No, I didn't see the sawdust filled bucket idea.  How's that work?  I was going to make some boxes and tubes of various sizes to use as nut traps.

I did harvest wild ones two years ago and I started really early.  The earlier nuts were really hard to get the husks off of.

Mike Jay wrote:No, I didn't see the sawdust filled bucket idea.  How's that work?  I was going to make some boxes and tubes of various sizes to use as nut traps.

I did harvest wild ones two years ago and I started really early.  The earlier nuts were really hard to get the husks off of.

Let us know how the nut traps work with pics please? Well I guess I read the squirrel assisted harvest idea from another Hazel nut  thread  here https://permies.com/t/27229/Hazelnuts-harvest-processing-propagation . Lets see if I can  copy the quote here:

Katrina Jones wrote:Here is a trick I read about enlisting help from the squirrels for harvesting.  Place a few 5-gallon buckets filled with sawdust around the hazelnut shrubs/trees.  The squirrels know which ones are good and harvest them.  They will (hopefully) be inclined to bury them in the buckets of sawdust.  You can then collect them for yourself, but be nice and leave some ears of non-GMO corn for them in the sawdust.  I will be planting my hazelnuts next spring and will try this method.  Let me know if it works for any of you.  :)

Will do!  I saw one youtube video where a guy had left some cinder blocks laying around (hole side up) and the squirrels had filled them up.  So that's a shape to start with.  Plus the sawdust bucket.  Lots of options, let's all try something and see what works.