Gardening, Home and Nature Thread, Nov. 22

Above, Tree of Diogenes

Should have sent this a couple days ago. It's even more beautiful in person. First freeze is going to drop the leaves though.

Diogenes

Gorgeous!

Edible Gardening/Putting Things By

As we approach Thanksgiving, a special feature on hazelnuts from 58Mikie!

Hi KT!

I want to say I enjoy Ace of Spades each and every day, with all contributors kicking it....From my standpoint, being involved with Oregon agriculture for my entire life, I particularly enjoy your "gardening" contribution!

Picture attached is a Hazelnut tree(Corylus avellana) from our orchards in Western Oregon's Willamette Valley. We have grown Hazelnuts here since 1939.
The Willamette Valley in Oregon grows 99% of the Hazelnut produced in the United States, although particularly this year (more later), Oregon's production may reach only 10 percent of total world production.

The main growing areas for Hazelnuts (I grew up calling them Filberts..."Farmers grow Filberts, people sell Hazelnuts".) are countries primarily in the northern hemisphere slightly above or below the 45th latitude, with a semi-marine climate....e.g. Turkey on the Black Sea, the largest producer, followed this year by either Chile or Oregon. The country of Georgia produces hazelnuts (Black Sea, also see Hilary Rodham Clintons brother investing in Georgia in Hazelnuts in the past), as does Azerbaijan, Italy (the past number two producer, and home to mega hazelnut using company Ferrero).

For scale, Turkey produces Hazelnut crops each year in the 500k tons to 800k ton level. The world in normal years north of one million tons of hazelnuts. Oregon the year, perhaps 120,000 tons.

As a fifty year + veteran of the Oregon hazelnut industry, I have seen some changes. For many years, our main variety of Hazelnuts was "Barcelona". A very large tree with large quality Hazelnuts. However, in 1986, a fungal disease called Eastern Filbert Blight-EFB- was found in the main growing regions of Oregon. The disease will eventually kill the tree, although much better fungicides are slowing the inevitability of the tree dying. During this time Oregon State University and its Hazelnut breeding program, under Dr. Shawn Mehlenbacher, have developed Hazelnut trees by traditional breeding with genes for EFB resistance.

During much of my farming career Oregon had about 30 thousand acres of Hazelnuts. Now with the "new" resistant trees, Oregon has nearly 100k acres producing Hazelnuts. Ferrero the big Italian conglomerate, I hear, would like another 100k acres here in Oregon producing Hazelnuts...

You know Ferrero produces Nutella....certainly a world wide phenomenon...I understand that Ferrero uses some 25-30 % of all Hazelnuts produced in the world.
This company has invested heavily in Turkey (besides their home company of Italy....and Chile).

As Turkey has been the world leader of Hazelnut (Findik) production for a long time, it is part of their national identity. During my time it has been my understanding, that the average Hazelnut farm in Turkey was about three acres (see production numbers above). Growers in Turkey mainly pick their production by hand, dry and sort the crop on blue tarps in the sun and deliver in large bags to the market or warehouses. In Oregon, my son and I do 100 acres with machinery, etc,.

This year, on April 11th, Turkey had a "deep freeze" in much of its vast agricultural lands. ( I have been there three times -a great place to visit, but.....the politics.

Hazelnuts are part of politics there and I have been in small room listening to Erdogan speaking...more than 20 years ago). The temperature in the hazelnut "hills"south of the Black Sea experienced 5 degrees F with the trees in full leaf; a bad crop disaster(also Turkish apricots were hammered and citrus was affected too). In addition, this area is "plagued" by a bug we in Oregon call the stink bug, which in Turkey is called the "skunk" bug. It does tremendous damage to the hazelnuts there. The Hazelnut market is currently abuzz....

FWIW, we are happy....we had EFB early on and had to pull out of all our orchard and replant with new varieties, which are now just producing...with a good market.

Several more photos to come.....
Thank you for all that you do....

58Mikie

Lots of good information there. I planted a couple of filbert relatives in my parent's yard years ago. The nuts are smaller than the ones you grow.

This is the pollen structure for Hazelnuts, the "catkin"..... a few blooms in the picture too.

As the winter proceeds, these catkins elongate, dry out, an release pollen. The main producing Hazelnut varieties also produce pollen but are self in-compatible. Pollenizers of different pollen "shed times" must be dispersed throughout the orchards...

A hazelnut bloom....in Winter. The pollen must be dry to blow in the air and land on the bloom, but following that movement of the pollen, high humidity is great (rain) to set the pollen in the bloom. The pollen must travel through the bloom with actual fertilization not occurring until May....

The pollenization details are complex. One of these days we'll try to post the little video of shaking a pollen tree in an orchard on a favorable day.

Lady Bug in the winter near a "catkin"
VORACIOUS, consumers of aphids in our orchards...we used to spray for aphids....not for the last twenty years...we love these bugs!

Juvenile form of Lady Bug...they eat aphids too!

Better than those stink bugs!

The Hazelnut production in July...we start harvesting in mid September....this is the variety "Yamhill"...the county we live in and one of the original counties (1843) in the Oregon territory..

Thank you

Take care

Thank you for teaching us so much. We're ready for some hazelnut treats now!

Gardens of The Horde

Anything going on in your garden?

Hope everyone has a nice weekend.

If you would like to send photos, stories, links, etc. for the Saturday Gardening Thread, the address is:

ktinthegarden at g mail dot com

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Week in Review

What has changed since last week's thread? Gardening, Home and Nature Thread, Nov. 15

Any thoughts or questions?

I closed the comments on that post so you wouldn't get banned for commenting on a week-old post, but don't try it anyway.