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 can have a rich harvest.

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

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

Description and origin of the hazelnut

Our native common hazel (Corylus avellana) belongs to the birch family (Betulaceae). The hazelnut bush is distributed across the entire European continent to Asia Minor. It survived the last Ice Age and was even the dominant tree in Europe in the Middle Stone Age. He only had to capitulate in front of the mighty mixed oak forests. The bushy, multi-stemmed growth of the hazelnut is typical, which is the result of constantly new shoots at the base. The saplings can already be several meters high in the first year and only branch out in the second year. The hazelnut leaves are alternate, roundish to obovate with a short tip and irregular hairs. Hazelnut leaves have a brief, yellow fall color. The hazel can also live up to 100 years.

Hazelnuts are monoecious (monoecious), which means that one plant has both male and female flowers. The male flowers are clustered in catkins, the females show their red stigmatic branches in axillary buds. The hazelnut flowers before the leaves sprout in February or March. The male catkins provide the first pollen for insects, but pollination is carried out by the wind. The hazelnut fruit is a single-seeded nut fruit. Only the seed, which is rich in healthy, unsaturated fatty acids, is consumed.

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

Why it pays to grow hazelnuts yourself

Hazelnuts can now be bought quite cheaply in any supermarket. So what are the benefits of growing your own? A big argument for 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 the better alternative, ethically and ecologically. And the hazelnut is a garden dweller that is really easy to care for: diseases and pests are rare and their care is also simple and not time-consuming. In addition, it is one of the earliest pollen donors for wild bees. So it's worth trying to grow.

hazelnut varieties

In addition to the native hazel and the ornamental corkscrew hazel (Corylus avellana 'Contorta') there are also varieties that have been bred for numerous and large fruits.

Recommended hazelnut varieties:

• C avellana ′Webb's prizenut′: Early variety, large fruits, plentiful setting, weaker growth, needs pollinators for high yields
• C avellana 'Miracle of Bollweiler': Very large, cone-shaped fruits, very productive, needs pollinators for high yields
• C avellana ′Halle Giants′: Very large, rounded fruits, very productive, needs pollinators for high yields

Tip: Also the lambert nut (Corylus maxima) provides tasty hazelnuts and is available with ornamental, red foliage.

How and where is the best place to plant hazelnuts?

Corylus avellana thrives well in 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 soil - albeit more slowly. It is absolutely frost hardy and its foliage is soil-improving. Planting should be done in spring or fall. Keep in mind that the hazel needs at least four to five meters of space in all directions to be able to unfold.

The incorporation of mainly organic fertilizer and potting soil – for example ours Plantura organic universal soil – improves growth and growth as well as flowering and fruiting in subsequent years. For a healthy soil life is ours Plantura organic soil activator ideally suited as it supplies the microorganisms living in the soil. Our Plantura organic universal fertilizer supports the hazelnut with all the important nutrients and promotes fruit setting and fruit size.

Be careful not to plant the hazel too deep. Water them generously and ensure an adequate water supply in the weeks after planting. When planting in autumn, you should focus on nutrient-rich compost or mineral fertilizer avoid, otherwise the young shoots will not be sufficiently frost hardy in the winter.

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

Caring for and cutting hazelnuts

Apart from an adequate water supply in summer, the hazelnut does not require any special care. Annually 100 grams of ours Plantura organic universal fertilizer or a comparable primarily organic fertilizer are sufficient to meet their nutritional needs. The hazelnut is very tolerant of pruning. The cut is always made "from below": Thick, old shoots are removed from the ground so that the bush does not become too dense. If you have neglected this thinning for a long time, you can radically place a hazel on the stick without any problems. Here, all shoots are set back at knee height. However, you then have to do without a rich harvest for up to five years. The best time to prune is after flowering.

multiply hazelnut

Hazelnuts can be propagated by seeds, vegetatively or by grafting. The table below provides an overview of the various methods.

sowing	Harvest fruits before they are fully ripe and remove the skins; Sow seeds outdoors in autumn
Vegetative propagation	Fruit varieties can be propagated by type through offshoots, lowering or tears
finishing	In winter, cultivars can grow up through copulation or goatsfoot grafting C avellana or C colorna be refined; spread with tree wax; potted at about 16 °C in the greenhouse until mid-May

Diseases and pests of hazelnuts

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

You can easily attach a glue ring to a single trunk. Also you can from September SC-nematodes (Steinernema carpocapsae) on the ground under the hazel to kill the larvae that overwinter in the ground. Spreading a cloth under the bush has also proven useful. In this way, the falling larvae cannot pupate in the ground and the generation of the following year is at least partially absent. Pesticides against the hazelnut borer are not permitted in the home garden.

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

Harvesting and storing hazelnuts

The hazelnut harvest begins at the beginning of September. Ripe nuts fall from the tree or can be knocked to the ground by shaking. You should not harvest firmly sticking fruits, because they are not yet ripe and therefore not tasty and cannot be stored. Remove the husks from the nuts. However, you do not have to remove the shells, because the seed can be kept much longer in the shell - for at least 12 months. Drying spread out in a cool, airy place prevents the development of mold.

Nutritional values ​​and use of hazelnuts

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. Hazelnut seeds also provide vitamins A, B, C and E as well as a lot of calcium, iron, potassium, sodium and phosphorus. In terms of weight, hazelnuts contain even more calcium than cow's milk. Due to secondary ingredients, regular consumption of hazelnuts has a positive effect on memory, cholesterol levels and the risk of heart disease.

Tip: The valuable ingredients remain almost completely intact even when the hazelnut is roasted and processed. However, this also applies to all allergenic substances. However, if you only have a mild hazelnut allergy, you can usually still consume the super nut 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 - eaten fresh, chopped in cakes or biscuits, made into spreads or even processed into hazelnut oil. The nuts taste particularly good in muesli if they have been roasted in the oven for 12 minutes at 180 °C. However, the production of hazelnut spirit and liqueur is better left to the experts.

If you are still interested in nuts from your own garden, you can find out everything you need to know here cultivation of peanuts.