Growing Hazel

[weekendwellies]

How practical would it be to try planting Hazel nuts on the allotment in order to have a supply of hazel sticks for plant supports etc.?
How big do they grow?
How fast do they grow?
Do they need any special care?
How easy would it be to get long straight sticks from them?
Can they be grown from Hazel nuts bought from a supermarket that you get for eating?
Do you plant them shell and all or do you break off the shell?
Do they need soaking first?
Anything else that I haven't thought of asking ...?

[BayViewPlot]

Would have thought a cutting of your favorite park variety would be the order of the day!

If you are wanting to grow from seed pot a few up when those on the tree start to drop. Would have thought shop-bought ones would be dead.

I bought two small (20cm high) plants 1 1/2 years ago for £25 a pop. They did have truffle impregnated roots though. Now plants are approx 2ft high.

bvp

[jacob marley]

It all depends how old you are and can you wait that long .
As for getting the nut's to grow some nuts benefit from a little spell in the freezer they think winter has been and then they germinate hopefully....jacob

[rana]

Hazel will grow into a medium size tree and will produce reasonably straight sticks - usefull for beans - where it needs to compete for light. It can be regularly cropped (of sticks) but once established forms an impressive root mass that is a bugger to get rid of (virtually indestructible). Young plants (3-4 years) can produce nuts but squirrels will nick them, bury them and then everybody else will have Hazel on their plot. Commercial growers use grafted trees.

[Paulottie]

Some allotments don't allow planting of trees. Rightly so, as you will shade out veg growing land (on yours or others plots) plus root run etc. Really they are best in hedgerows. I'd think in terms of land unsuitable for cultivation on the plot or producing a screen on a boundary fence. Consult with you allotment manager. That way they could be considered a communal crop. I wouldn't worry too much about squirrels... Nuts do get about but are easy to remove for a couple of years.

Coppiced (cutting them down completely every 7-10 years) Hazel will produce the most straight sticks. but with a bit of experiance and being more selective in your pruning you should get a good crop of nuts too.(delicious when fresh) There are quite a few good varieties - mainly with the names like Kent cobs or Filberts. I do have the name of a good supplier I could look out if you wish to proceed.

[snohare]

They prefer alkaline soil - their natural habitat is chalk downs - so you may find that they don't do too well in your soil to begin with. Getting them to grow from seed is a bu66er, when I worked at a tree nursery they had a very poor success rate simply because so many hazelnuts wouldn't germinate. If you do try it, put them in a bucket of water first, discard the ones that float - they are empty. Stratifying - rubbing with sandpaper to encourage penetration of moisture to the kernel - might work well too. I don't remember if they needed to be put in the fridge, but I'd try it, it's a fairly safe bet it wouldn't harm. Sow the seeds into a thick layer of coarse damp sand mixed with a bit of leaf mould and leave for a year is how we used to do it - I wonder if the addition of lime might have helped a bit ?
The easiest answer to your plant support problem is to stick some willow osiers into a boggy bit of the site, watch them grow at a rate of knots, and coppice them each year. They won't last as long as hazel, but they will do the job, and if you use salix alba it is a beautiful yellow stem.