Gadenin日本語Get the appPlant two, and plant them close
A single hazel will grow happily for twenty years and give you almost nothing. It is wind pollinated and effectively self-incompatible, meaning its own pollen cannot fertilize its own flowers. It needs pollen carried on the air from a genetically different plant whose catkins are shedding at the same moment its own female flowers are receptive. That is the single most important decision at planting time, and it cannot be fixed later without waiting several years for a new plant to reach flowering size.
Plant at least two different plants, and three is safer. They must be genuinely different plants rather than suckers of the same one, because suckers are clones and their pollen is as useless to the parent as its own. If you are buying, ask for plants that flower at the same time; if you are planting a hedge or a nut plot, mixing several sources is the simplest insurance.
Distance matters because pollen is heavy and does not travel far in still winter air. Partners within 50 ft (15 m) of each other pollinate reliably. At 100 ft (30 m) you are depending on wind direction, and beyond that you are hoping. Put the partner upwind of your main bush relative to the prevailing winter wind and you improve the odds again.
Wild hazel growing in a hedgerow nearby can pollinate a garden bush, and often does. If you already have hazel within about 50 ft (15 m) and it is a different plant from yours, you may already have a partner.
Site and soil
Hazels are woodland-edge plants and they behave like it. They tolerate part shade, but nut yield tracks sunlight closely: a bush in half a day of sun makes plenty of leaf and a light crop, while the same bush in full sun crops several times as heavily. Give them at least six hours of direct sun if you want nuts rather than a screen.
Soil is where hazels are genuinely easy. They grow on almost anything from chalk to clay, prefer a pH around 6.0 to 7.5, and cope with thin, poor ground better than most fruiting plants. The one thing they will not tolerate is waterlogging. Roots sitting in winter water rot, and a spot that still holds standing water twelve hours after heavy rain needs a raised mound or a different site.
Do not enrich the soil heavily. A hazel on rich ground, or one fed generously with nitrogen, puts its energy into vigorous shoot growth and suckers rather than into flower buds. Growers who complain of enormous bushes with no nuts are usually feeding lawn fertilizer to the grass underneath. Moderate fertility, full sun and free drainage is the combination that crops.
Shelter is worth thinking about, but for the opposite reason to most fruit. Pollination happens by wind in midwinter, so a bush planted in a completely enclosed courtyard, walled on all sides, may struggle to receive pollen at all. Some air movement through the planting is an asset.
| Factor | Requirement | What happens if you get it wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Sun | 6 hours minimum, more is better | Vigorous leafy growth, few flower buds, light crop |
| Drainage | Free draining, no standing water | Root rot, dieback, slow decline over two or three seasons |
| pH | 6.0 to 7.5, tolerant of chalk | Yellowing leaves on very acid ground |
| Fertility | Moderate; no heavy nitrogen | Huge bush, forest of suckers, no nuts |
| Partner plant | Different plant within 50 ft (15 m), overlapping flowering | Full-sized shells with empty or shriveled kernels |
| Air movement | Open enough for wind to carry pollen | Poor pollination even with a partner present |
Spacing depends on what you want it to be
A hazel is naturally a multi-stemmed bush that suckers from the base, and left alone it becomes a thicket 15 to 20 ft (4.5 to 6 m) across. How much room you give it depends on whether you intend to manage it as a bush, keep it on a coppice cycle, or train it up as a single-stemmed tree by removing every sucker.
For nut production, the traditional plot spacing is 15 ft (4.5 m) between plants in each direction, giving a bush you can walk around and pick from the ground. In a small garden 10 to 12 ft (3 to 3.6 m) works if you accept regular pruning. For a coppiced hedge or a nut hedge grown mainly for poles and screening, plant 3 to 6 ft (1 to 1.8 m) apart and expect to cut on a rotation.
Whatever spacing you choose, allow for the suckers. The bush is not the plant you put in the ground; it is that plant plus everything it throws up from below soil level for the rest of its life. Spacing that looks generous around a two-foot whip looks tight within five years.
- Plant in the dormant season Bare-root plants go in from leaf fall to bud break, in any spell when the ground is not frozen or waterlogged. Container plants can go in year round but establish far better planted dormant. Autumn planting gives roots months to settle before the first summer of drought.
- Dig wide, not deep Make the hole two to three times the width of the root system but no deeper than the roots themselves. Loosen the sides so roots can push out. Hazel roots run wide and shallow, and a deep narrow hole in clay simply fills with water.
- Set it at the same depth it grew Find the soil mark on the stem and match it. Planting deep encourages rot at the base and buries the crown from which the useful suckers arise. If the plant is grafted, keep the union clear of the soil so the rootstock does not send up its own shoots.
- Backfill with the soil you dug out Do not fill the hole with rich compost. In heavy ground that creates a sump that holds water and discourages roots from leaving the hole. Firm the soil with your heel in stages as you fill, and water it in thoroughly to settle the soil around the roots.
- Mulch and protect Mulch 2-3 in (5-8 cm) deep over the root zone, kept clear of the stem. Keep a 3 ft (1 m) circle free of grass for the first three years, because grass competition slows a young hazel more than anything else. Where deer or rabbits are present, guard the stems from day one.
- Water through the first two summers A deep soak of several gallons once a week in dry spells beats a daily sprinkle. After the second year an established hazel needs watering only in a genuine drought, and even then mainly while the nuts are filling in midsummer.
The first years and what to record
Expect the first few nuts in year three or four and a real crop in year six to eight. In the meantime the job is to build a framework of six to eight strong stems from the base and remove the rest, which is the starting point for the coppice cycle described in the pruning guide. Do not let the bush turn into a fifty-stem thicket in its first five years; you will never get it back.
Note down where each plant came from and where it is in the ground, ideally with a sketch or a measured position rather than a label that will fade. When one bush turns out to crop well and another produces blanks, you need to know which is which, and after five years of suckering it is genuinely hard to tell one plant from its neighbor's suckers.
From the first winter onwards, record the week catkins begin shedding pollen on each plant and the week you can see the tiny red female flowers. Two or three years of those observations tell you whether your plants are actually pollinating each other, long before the first crop confirms it or otherwise.