Adding hazelnuts to the forest garden
Last winter when I started
reading and dreaming about forest gardens, I put hazels on
my list of possible forest garden plants. I was primarily
interested in the shrub because I knew we had wild hazels growing in
young areas of the woods nearby, where the honeysuckle tends to
strangle them every year and prevent them from fruiting. The fact
that Mark and I are addicted to Nutella, and that hazels can grow well
in partial shade, also added to my interest.
I kept considering
transplanting some of the strangled shrubs out of the honeysuckle and
into the forest garden. I never got around to it, though, because
I wasn't sure if I should devote precious garden space to unproven wild
plants, or if I should find a cultivated version instead which might
bear more nuts. Last week, I finally took an hour to research
hazels, and I found so much information I had to turn it into a
lunchtime series. Stay tuned and be prepared to end up as enthused
as I am.
| This post is part of our Hybrid Hazelnut lunchtime series.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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