American Hazelnut

Size, growth and what to expect

A young American hazelnut adds 13 to 24 inches of height a year. That matches the roughly foot and a half a year our growth estimator uses for a medium grower. It makes a rounded, thicket-forming shrub, 8 to 12 feet tall and 8 to 13 feet wide, and it is long-lived.

Nuts usually start on plants 2 to 3 years old, with a good crop every 2 to 3 years. The male catkins, 2 to 4 inches long, open in late winter or early spring before the leaves. The half-inch brown nuts ripen from September to October inside a hairy husk with ragged edges. Grouse, quail, wild turkeys, chipmunks, squirrels, foxes, black bears and deer eat them. Hazel is an old English word for filbert.

It grows wild from Maine west to Saskatchewan and south to eastern Oklahoma and Georgia, along streams, in hedgerows, meadows and woodland margins.

How to grow American Hazelnut

American hazelnut grows in full sun or part shade, on any soil from dry sand to average loam as long as it drains. It suckers into a wide clump, so plant hedgerow bushes 6 to 8 feet apart and keep single plants 10 feet from paths and buildings.

Bare-root saplings go in while dormant, late fall or early spring. Dig a hole twice the width of the roots, keep the root flare at grade, and backfill with plain soil. Mulch two or three inches deep in a ring that stays off the stems. Nuts are sown in fall, two inches deep, and must be covered with hardware cloth, since squirrels and chipmunks dig them up.

Water once a week through the first summer. Rabbits and voles chew young hazel stems, and deer nip the tips, so cage the bush for the first two or three years. No pruning is needed beyond removing dead wood.

Hazelnuts are wind-pollinated and a single bush will not set nuts, so plant two or more seedlings within 50 feet. Squirrels and blue jays take the crop early, so pick when the husks begin to brown.