hazelnut thread

Al Senner wrote:
John Polk wrote:
If they have a lean, hungry winter, they will be much less likely to reproduce.
Abundance of food promotes abundance of squirrels.

Not according to Geoff Lawton! He made a big deal about how infertility clinics are only in wealthy countries and poor people (and animals) are more fertile. I guess they need to breed more if the mortality rate is high.

C.J. do you think perhaps that is because of the increased use of medications and processed foods?

Brenda Groth wrote:I searched but didnt' find a hazelnut thread so I thought I would start one.

3 or 4 years ago I planted 6 hazelnuts and a neighbor planted 2. Mine were 4 from one nursery and 2 from another, just sticks.

Well they grew like wildfire and even with the drought we had this year, 4 of the 6 have nuts on them. I was so thrilled to see the pretty soft green clusters of moist nuts, just babies but already the size of marbles, and a real promise of proteins growing on my property.

I have read about hazelnuts and I have read that you can eat them in the unripe green stage and that they should be eaten with a bit of salt, or you can wait for them to fall free from the husks and dry them and eat them the usual way.

As I have never had a fresh hazelnut this is all new to me, but I'm loving the idea that i have a chance to try fresh hazelnuts off my own trees. There won't be a lot but there are more than I figured I'd get in only a few years, so I'm happy. I figure I'm going to have to find a way to protect them from the browsers, i'm thinking that as they begin to ripen I might wrap something around the clusters to deter racoons and squirrels. Our squirrels are well fed in the front yard and the red oaks are loaded with acorns this year, so I'm  hoping they'll not really pay attention to the hazelnuts which are out of that area, but I'm going to keep an eye on them anyway.

I want them for me.

I am hoping to get a crop from all of my nut trees before I die (2 black walnuts, 1 carpathian walnut, 1 butternut, 2 heartnut, 6 hazelnuts, 2 sweet chestnut, 1 hardy almond and 2 hickory) but most of them are all still babies less than 5 years old...so this years baby hazelnuts is a hope and a promise to me.

Am posting this thread for a hazelnut discussion and even open to recipes and storage ideas, etc.. Wish I had a bunch of those mesh onion bags to tie around them, but don't..but i'll have my thinking cap on and am open to ideas.