Although hazelnuts are monoecious (they have male and female flowers on the same tree), they are incompatible with each other, meaning that a tree cannot produce nuts with its own pollen. So the answer is yes, they need to cross-pollinate. If a hazelnut tree is more than five years old and has not yet produced nuts, it is likely that it is missing its partner. Hazel trees require the cross-pollination of a different hazelnut variety to produce a nut crop.
You must grow two hazelnut trees with strong genetic differences, one as a pollinator and the other as a producer to obtain a crop of nuts. These trees must be about 65 feet apart from each other for cross-pollination to take place. Some things go really well together, like pancakes and maple syrup. But there are other winning combinations that few people know about.
One of them is the cultivation of hazelnuts (Corylus) together with truffles. . They are hard to find, don't stay fresh for long, and are incredibly expensive to buy. They grow underground and adhere to the roots of certain types of trees, such as hazel, oak and beech.
Working as a team benefits both truffles and trees. Truffles help tree roots access water and nutrients in the soil. In return, the fungi absorb the sugary juices that the tree roots exude. Scientists are still studying the most effective ways to inoculate hazelnuts with truffle spores, but in the meantime, producers who have invested in Earthgen truffle-inoculated hazelnuts will have to wait and see.
It can take 6 to 10 years for both crops to be mature enough to harvest. For layered propagation, take a branch, and for the simplest type of stratification, you can place it on the ground. And then it produces new roots where the soil is. And then you cut it from the original plant.
Basically, you're bending the branch, you're burying it, and then a whole new plant will grow. And it will take about two years for it to uproot. This is an inexpensive way to propagate a plant, but it is difficult for mass production. Infected nuts do not fall and often end up being harvested along with the healthy rest of the crop, which at best creates a nuisance to the harvest and, at worst, effectively ruins the harvest.
It takes about four years for trees to produce nuts. See our full guide to harvesting hazelnuts here. Once the shrub is in the ground, you only have to wait a few seasons until you can start filling your home with the buttery scent of freshly roasted hazelnuts. On August 21, Adam Koziol of EarthGen International Ltd., was weeding his potted hazelnuts and found his first truffles in one of the pots.
Although the trees have male and female flowers, they are not self-fertile, so you will always get better results if you plant them in groups to get pollen from one hazelnut to the next, although other trees in the neighborhood will also help with pollination. The new shoots wither and the buds and leaves die, remaining attached to the tree after healthy leaves fall in the fall. One good thing about hazelnuts is that they can be shaped like shrubs or trees, depending on your preferences and the space available. Don't worry: the word “tree” is a technicality; hazelnuts are generally grown as a bushy shrub and can be maintained at a very manageable size by pruning.
About 65 years ago, when I was a child in West Virginia, I would go to places near my house after the first frost and pick hazelnuts in the wild as well as persimmons and papayas. While mature trees are drought tolerant, young shrubs need consistent moisture and should never be allowed to dry out completely. If you want a delicious treat, look no further than this delicious recipe for dark chocolate and hazelnut truffles. And a native hazelnut won't contract Eastern Fin Blight (EFB), while European hazelnuts are vulnerable to that blight.
So, there are some crosses that put the qualities of an American hazelnut but the flavors of the European hazelnut. Hazelnuts are monoecious, meaning they produce male and female flowers on the same tree, although they may not bloom at the same time. Due to their dense crown and obstruction of sunlight, hazel trees usually have very little grass under them, making it easier to detect and harvest walnuts when they fall to the ground. .
