Hazelnut: Everything you need to know about growing in the garden

Hazelnuts are tasty and easy to grow in your own garden. With just a little care and a little patience, you too will get a rich harvest.

Germans are crazy about the delicious round hazelnut. We import around 70,000 tons of hazelnuts annually - that's 35% of the hazelnuts produced worldwide. Only around 70 to 95 tons are produced in Germany. The native hazel is a good, early pasture for bees, improves the soil and copes well with little care. We think that growing it in your own garden is definitely worth it - that's why you can find out everything here about producing the noble nut in your own garden.

This article introduces you to the hazelnut (Corylus) in all their facets: origin and site conditions, care, possible diseases, harvest and storage. And of course you will learn the advantages of growing the local nut.

Description and origin of the hazelnut

The common hazel native to us (Corylus avellana) belongs to the birch family (Betulaceae). The hazelnut bush is widespread across the entire European continent as far as Asia Minor. It survived the last Ice Age and was even the dominant wood in Europe in the Middle Stone Age. Only in front of the mighty mixed oak forests did he have to surrender. Typical is the bushy, multi-stemmed growth of the hazelnut, which is the result of constantly new saplings at the base. The saplings can reach heights of several meters in the first year and then branch out in the second year. The leaves of the hazelnut are alternate, rounded to obovate with a short tip and irregular hairs. Hazelnut leaves have a short, yellow autumn color. The hazel can also live up to 100 years.

Hazelnuts are monoecious, which means you can find both male and female flowers on a plant. The male flowers stand together in catkins, the female show their red stigma in axillary buds. The hazelnut flowers before the leaves shoot in February or March. The male kittens provide the first pollen for insects, but pollination is done by the wind. The hazelnut fruit is a single-seeded nut fruit. Only the seeds, which are rich in healthy, unsaturated fatty acids, are consumed.

tipHazelnut tree: Tree-shaped and taller than the common hazelnut, the tree hazel (Corylus colurna), which is relatively unknown to us. It comes from the Balkans, Turkey and Afghanistan. Its fruits are slightly smaller than those of the common hazel. It also tolerates the urban climate well, which is why it is seen more and more often as a street tree.

Why it is worth growing the hazelnut yourself

Hazelnuts can now be bought very cheaply in any supermarket. So what are the advantages of your own cultivation? A big argument in favor of your own hazelnut bush is the taste. There is a whole universe of taste between roasted hazelnuts, almost all of which are imported from Turkey, and fresh, still moist nuts. In addition, the imported goods are not only transported far. The cultivation takes place in huge monocultures, with intensive use of pesticides and with morally extremely questionable working conditions - unfortunately often also for children. Producing your own hazelnuts is therefore ethically and ecologically the better alternative. And the hazelnut is a garden dweller that is really easy to care for: diseases and pests are rare and their care is also easy and not very time-consuming. It is also one of the earliest pollen donors for wild bees. So it's worth trying the cultivation.

Hazelnut varieties

In addition to the domestic hazel and the decorative corkscrew hazel (Corylus avellana 'Contorta') also exist varieties that have been cultivated for numerous and large fruits.

Recommended hazelnut varieties:

• C. avellana ′ Webbs Prize Nut ′: Early variety, large fruits, plentiful set, slower growing, needs pollinator for high yields
• C. avellana ′ Miracle of Bollweiler ‘: Very large, cone-shaped fruits, very productive, needs pollinators for high yields
• C. avellana 'Hallesche Giesen': Very large, rounded fruits, very productive, needs pollinators for high yields

Tip: The Lambert Nut (Corylus maxima) delivers tasty hazelnuts and is available with decorative red leaves.

How and where is the best way to plant the hazelnut?

Corylus avellana thrives in the sun and partial shade. In the shade, however, fruit set and fruit size suffer. Fertile soil also ensures better growth, but hazel also grows on poorer soils - albeit more slowly. It is absolutely frost hardy and its foliage improves the soil. Planting should be done in spring or autumn. Keep in mind that the hazel needs at least four to five meters of space in all directions in order to be able to unfold.

The incorporation of primarily organic fertilizer and potting soil - for example ours Plantura organic universal soil - improves growth and growth as well as flowering and fruit in the following years. For a healthy soil life is ours Plantura organic soil activator ideal as it supplies the microorganisms living in the soil. Our Plantura organic universal fertilizer then supports the hazelnut with all the important nutrients and promotes fruit set and fruit size.

Be careful not to plant the hazel too deep. Water them generously and ensure that there is an adequate supply of water in the weeks after planting as well. When planting in the fall, you should focus on nutrient-rich compost or mineral fertilizer do without, otherwise the young shoots will not go into winter sufficiently frost-hardy.

tipHazelnut fertilization: Some varieties of hazelnut can fertilize themselves and thus ensure a fruit set. However, some varieties require a different pollinator. Another variety or a wild hazelnut can be used for this. In the case of the varieties presented below, we therefore point out the respective fertilization.

Maintain and cut the hazelnut

Apart from an adequate water supply in summer, the hazelnut does not require any special care. 100 grams of ours annually Plantura organic universal fertilizer or a comparable mainly organic fertilizer are sufficient to meet their nutritional requirements. The hazelnut is very easy to cut. The cut is always “from below”: thick, old shoots are removed from the ground so that the shrub does not become too dense. If you have missed this thinning for a long time, you can easily place a hazel on the stick radically. Here, all shoots are set back to knee height. However, you will have to do without a rich harvest for up to five years. The best time to cut is after flowering.

Propagate hazelnut

Hazelnuts can be propagated via seeds, vegetatively or through processing. The table below provides an overview of the various methods.

sowing	Harvest fruits before they are fully ripe and remove the peel; Sow seeds outdoors in autumn
Vegetative propagation	By cuttings, subsidence or demolition, fruit types can be propagated according to type
Finishing	In winter, varieties can arise through copulation or goat foot refinement C. avellana or C. colurna to be refined; spread with tree wax; Place potted in the greenhouse at around 16 ° C until mid-May

Diseases and pests of the hazelnut

The hazelnut is insensitive to diseases and pests. Occasionally she gets from mildew infested, which, however, can hardly slow down their vitality. An annoying and widespread pest, however, is the hazelnut borer (Curculio nucum). He is one of the weevils, so is with them too Vine weevil (Otiorhynchus) related. The hazelnut borer lays its eggs one by one in unripe hazelnuts, in which it has previously gnawed a small hole. When the larvae eat, they create hollow nuts that simply fall from the tree. If you want to minimize the infestation in the home garden, you can rely on precocious varieties, because these are infested less often. It is also possible to buy hazelnuts as stems - they are then grafted on the tree hazel.

You can easily attach a glue ring to a single stem. You can also use SC-Nematodes (Steinernema carpocapsae) on the soil under the hazel to kill the larvae that overwinter in the soil. Spreading a piece of cloth under the bush has also proven useful. The falling larvae cannot pupate in the ground and the generation of the following year fails at least in part. Pesticides against the hazelnut borer are not permitted in the home garden.

Tip: The pupae of the hazelnut borer linger in the ground for years, so that your efforts may only show results after a few years.

Harvest and store hazelnuts

The hazelnut harvest begins at the beginning of September. Ripe nuts fall from the tree or can be shaken to the ground. You should not harvest firmly adhering fruits, because they are not yet ripe, therefore not tasty and also not storable. Remove the bracts from the nuts. You do not have to remove the pods, however, because the seeds can be kept for a much longer time in the peel - at least 12 months. Drying them, spread out in a cool, airy place, will prevent mold from developing.

Nutritional values ​​and uses of the hazelnut

More than half the weight of a hazelnut is fat - but it's not just the healthy, unsaturated fatty acids that make hazelnuts a real local superfood. The seeds of the hazelnuts also bring vitamins A, B, C and E as well as lots of calcium, iron, potassium, sodium and phosphorus. In terms of weight, there is even more calcium in hazelnuts than in cow's milk. Due to secondary ingredients, regular consumption of hazelnuts has a positive influence on memory performance, cholesterol levels and the risk of heart disease.

Tip: The valuable ingredients are almost completely retained when the hazelnut is roasted and processed. However, this also applies to all allergenic substances. However, if you only have a weak hazelnut allergy, you can still consume the supernut in a heavily processed state - for example in nut cream. By the way, dogs can also have a hazelnut allergy.

Hazelnuts can be used in many ways in the kitchen - consumed fresh, chopped into cakes or biscuits, made into creams or even made into hazelnut oil. The nuts taste particularly good in muesli if they have been roasted in the oven at 180 ° C for 12 minutes. However, it is better to leave the production of hazelnut spirit and liqueur to the experts.

If you are interested in nuts from your own garden, you can find out everything about the Growing peanuts.