Planting Hazels!

After many months of talking about and waiting for our hazelnut trees, we finally have most of them planted. All of this was preceded by several weeks of digging holes and making cages out of hardware cloth. We wanted to give our trees a good start, so we dug large holes - about 3 ft wide and 18 inches deep.

And then we added lots of compost to the soil to refill the hole. The compost will provide the trees with nutrients and will also help them retain water during the summer.


We're planting 8 varieties of hazelnuts from two different nurseries. The first batch arrived on March 31: bare-root 2-yr-old layered clones of Tonda di Giffoni, Halle's Giant, Gamma, Delta, and Yamhill. It's very important that the bare roots don't dry out, so we dipped the roots in a gel that helps keep them wet. We then heeled them into our pile of finished compost. They stayed pretty happy there, which gave us a week to get them into the ground -- which we needed, since there were 38 to plant in the first batch!

We partially refilled each hole with a mixture of soil and compost, and we made sure that the collar of each tree was level with the ground. We spread out the roots, held the tree straight, and started filling the hole with compost and soil.

For protection from the vicious Glendale rabbits (who ate the tops off our first four hazels over the winter), we constructed 3-ft-high, 6-inch-diameter cages out of 1/2-inch hardware cloth. We buried the bottoms of the cages a couple of inches as we refilled the holes. Between those and the family of stray cats nearby, we're hoping our trees will be safe from rodents.



Hazelnut trees naturally grow with multiple trunks coming up from the base, which can make it difficult to walk through the orchard for harvesting and maintenance. Our tree cages will help us train them into single-trunked trees. Pruning some of the buds off will also help the trees put more of their energy to establishing a healthy root system.

According to our soil test, we have pretty poor soil to work with - low in organic matter, pH around 5, and low in nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium, and potassium. Hazels like a rich soil (higher pH), so we added about 1/2 c of calcitic lime to each hole. (We will also top-dress with about 10 lbs of lime per tree.) We also added 1/2 c of rock phosphate to each hole, a slow-release phosphorus source to stimulate root growth.

Most of what we're adding is slow-release, and we hope that periodic top-dressing with compost and manure will help stabilize the pH and keep the levels of nutrients in the soil high. It will take time and lots of care to get there, though.

We also added two products from Oikos Tree Crops. The first is a root-zone "tea bag" made from fish, alfalfa and feather meal (yum) and potash inoculated with mycorrhizal fungus. The second is a slow-release macro-micronutrient tab which dissolves over the course of two years. We have no idea if they'll work, but we're hoping they'll help to make up for some of the initial nutrient deficiencies of our soil.

Finally, we gave each tree a good watering-in (Joanie at the hose, here). It's been a rainy spring so far, which helps the chances for our trees establishing themselves properly.


We're expecting to lose some trees, particularly the Yamhill and Halle's, which had very poorly-developed roots when they arrived. We've been watering them every day it doesn't rain, and soon we'll mulch them to protect them from grass. After that we'll install a drip irrigation system that will give the trees a steady supply of water over the summer.