European hazelnuts (Corylus avellana) are among a kitchen gardener's best friends if pruned properly. The nuts are incredibly delicious, whether salted, eaten right out of the shell, or used in sweet or savory dishes. The trees will tolerate a little shade and can be used to produce small, multi-trunked trees, hedges or thickets.
Here are some guidelines on pruning.
PLANTING TIME: Head back your new trees when you plant them to encourage the vigorous production of new wood, which will give you larger crops. Hazelnuts are produced on 1-year-old wood. See a diagram here.
WINTER: During their first season of dormancy, thin the trees to just three to five scaffold branches.
AFTER A FEW YEARS: When the tree is established, reduce your pruning to a little maintenance. Prune out broken, crossing or downward-facing branches as the trees grow. Such pruning will concentrate the trees' vigor for developing scaffold branching for new fruiting wood.
AFTER 10-15 YEARS: Thin the crown to allow in more sunlight.
SUCKERS: Layered hazelnuts grow on their own roots, so they can be allowed to sucker to produce a shrub, thicket or hedge. With grafted hazelnuts, though, you should remove any suckers produced below the graft union as they emerge to prevent them from sapping strength from the nut-bearing part of the tree. See a diagram here.
• At least two varieties of hazelnuts known to be good pollinators for each other are needed for good crops of nuts. Winter winds carry the pollen from the catkins (male) to the small female flowers.
• Both layered and grafted trees usually bear within two to three years. Seedlings may take four to six years to bear. While the nuts can be eaten slightly unripe, they won't store well unless completely ripe.
• Once a year, on a dry day, apply a 50/50 solution of water and white latex exterior paint to the south side of hazelnut trunks for the first two years to prevent sunburn. As the tree's canopy develops, the danger should pass.
• Keep the area beneath hazelnut trees mulched to preserve soil moisture and to make fallen nuts easier to find.
• Dip your freshly toasted hazelnuts in the best 70 percent bittersweet chocolate you can afford and be grateful that you live in hazelnut country.
--Freelance writer/photographer Vern Nelson; email@example.com