The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

First cultivated flower

Hazel catkins

The first cultivated bloom of the year for us is always the hazel bushes. From a bee standpoint, it's nearly time to look for pollen when you see the catkins begin to loosen and Hazel stamensyellow, meaning that stamens will soon emerge.

I don't think the bush really counts bloom time until a little later, though. The tiny female flowers won't open up until the male flowers are in full bloom, which probably won't be for a couple more weeks yet.

Meanwhile, for those of you keeping track in your own yards, I should mention that hazel is very different from witch hazel. The latter can bloom at any time between late fall and early spring, with the bloom time (according to
Lee Reich) depending on the number of chill hours the tree has enjoyed. Our witch hazels bloomed quite early this winter, which I hope isn't an ominous sign meaning our fruit trees will be similarly precipitous.



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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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I'm assuming that these "hazel" bushes are the ones that produce hazelnuts, right? If so, from the time you planted them to the time you began harvesting nuts, how many years was that? I'm seriously thinking of planing hazel bushes and almonds, but wondering how long it's going to be before I can start harvesting the nuts. I know the description in the catalogues say 3-4 years, but sometimes that is just an average. I know pecan trees take 30 years before you can have a harvest and if I planted them now, I'd probably be dead before I was able to get any nuts, the same with trees like walnuts, hickories.
Comment by NaYan Fri Feb 5 10:11:11 2016
Nayan --- The answer is in the first link in this post.... :-)
Comment by anna Fri Feb 5 17:04:15 2016

Well d'uh. :) You can see my 1/4 Polish ancestry coming out! Ha ha.

Thanks.

Comment by NaYan Sat Feb 6 14:29:32 2016





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