Common hazel (hazel) is a forest resident of central Russia, known since ancient times for the excellent taste of its fruits - nuts, their high nutritional value, and the magical properties of wood ascribed to it by popular beliefs. This useful shrub is invaluable for its winged helpers - bees. Its abundant spring bloom gives a huge amount of the main food for insects - pollen, thoroughly supporting them after wintering. The excellent decorativeness of hazel, and especially its hybrid culture - hazelnuts, is increasingly used by gardeners in decorating summer cottages and estates.
Culture Description
Representing a deciduous shrub or low, up to 8 m tall, tree, hazel, the photo of which can be seen in the article, has a decorative and attractive appearance. Oval or spherical dense crown and light smooth gray-brown bark with transverse stripes create a pleasant impression. Hazelnuts bloom in early spring, even before the leaves bloom. Since hazel is a monoecious plant, beautiful stamen earrings appear on it, single or bundled, and pistil flowers. Four bifurcated connected stamens make up a flower. Spring flowering hazelnuts - a beautiful life-affirming spectacle. The fruit of hazel is a nut. They are pubescent with a greenish plus and combined in a fertility of 3-5 or more pieces. Hazelnuts bear fruit annually, alternating abundant and moderate yields. Beginning from the 5-8th year, fruiting is characteristic of a culture such as hazel (hazel). Planting and care are determined by the method of planting.
Nuts: composition and benefits
Ripe hazel kernels are not only very tasty, but also the most high-calorie of all types of nuts. They exceed the nutritional products of the meat and dairy industry. The fatty oils, trace elements, vitamins, amino acids and their unique compounds contained in nuts give the kernels excellent taste and healing qualities. Their use in food is useful for children and adults, it contributes to the multifaceted development of the young body, as well as prolonging life and maintaining good health at a mature level in people of mature age. Nuts are eaten raw or toasted, added as a filler in the manufacture of chocolate, confectionery, oriental sweets. And having excellent taste, peanut butter is a component of salads, hot and cold appetizers. The long shelf life of hazelnut fruits (3-4 years), during which they do not lose their basic qualities, is another advantage of this unique product.
The tannins, tannins, and essential oils available in the bark and leaves of hazel make it possible to effectively use them in the perfumery and pharmaceutical industries.
Healing properties
The high bactericidal properties of hazel are successfully used in the treatment of skin diseases (neurodermatitis, eczema, etc.). Young leaves of the plant alleviate the painful manifestations of liver damage, and peeled fruits (without brown husks) in a mixture with honey enhance the blood-forming function of the body and relieve rheumatic pains. Vodka extracts of nuts are successfully used in the treatment of pulmonary problems, bronchitis, fever, kidney stones. The crushed kernels carefully mixed with egg white are an excellent remedy for chemical and thermal burns. Decoctions of spring bark relieve febrile conditions with malaria, peanut butter helps in the fight against helminths, and is used in cosmetology.
Hazel: photos showing decorative
Equally important are the decorative qualities of the shrub. Hazel is appreciated by landscape designers of garden areas due to the dense foliage, which in the autumn turns yellow and red. There are also very picturesque forms of hazel with a wonderful crimson shade of leaves that lasts throughout the season. This is the so-called hazel red-leaved. The use of such unusual plants in personal landscaping will not only decorate the space, but will make it unique.
Red and green leaf hazel
To ensure annual fruiting, inter-pollinated varieties should be planted on the site. Hazel "first-born" and "Tambov early" are just pollinators of red-leaved forms. Forming a sufficient number of winter-hardy male inflorescences, they prevent the loss of productivity. Since in winter hazel pollen often dies, but female flowers are preserved, which are subsequently pollinated due to winter stocks of pollinator cultivars. Species of hazelnuts with green leaves are considered more winter-hardy. And hazel is red-leaved - vulnerable in the cold season. However, from among the red-leaved varieties “maria makarevich” and “Pushkin red” are famous for their frost resistance.
At the beginning of the last century, I.V. Michurin, working on the acclimatization of southern hazelnuts, received winter-hardy crops. Subsequently, over the years of breeding work, new hazelnut varieties with excellent characteristics were created that are successfully growing today in both the southern and temperate latitudes of Russia.
Hazel (hazel): planting and care
Hazelnuts prefer the eastern and northeastern sections of low slopes. It is in these areas that the risk of burns or freezing is minimal. Hazel is shade tolerant, but permanent shading can lead to loss of yield and decorativeness. Choosing for planting should be protected from bright sunlight and strong winds with fertile, well-drained neutral soils without flooding with groundwater. To obtain sustainable walnut yields, a shrub should be planted with an interval of 3 meters to allow cross-wind pollination.
Hazel breeding
Planting hazel is a simple process, but it takes time if you prepare the planting material yourself. Hazel is propagated by seeds, dividing the bush or root cuttings, which are bent to the ground and pinned, laid in grooves and covered with soil. The tops of the branches are gently lifted and tied to pegs. After a year, well-rooted layering can be transplanted to a chosen permanent location. Planting hazel seeds with seeds is a longer and more laborious process. First, stratification will be required, i.e., long-term cooling of the seeds planted in the soil, simulating a biological winter. And secondly, with this reproduction, the main characteristics of the maternal culture change, and the variety is not preserved. Usually, hazelnut seedlings are reborn into a half-hazelnut, which, however, is not inferior in taste and decorative qualities to its mother form. Naturally, the time of the beginning of fruiting is also postponed. The seeds are ripe nuts - hazel. Landing and care are quite simple. Seeds are sown in autumn, deepened by 7-8 cm, or in spring - 5-6 cm. When planted with seeds, hazel begins to bear fruit in 6-8 years, vegetative propagation allows the young bush to enter the fruiting season for 3-4 years.
Vegetative propagation
The bush grows due to sleeping buds located on the rhizome. 2-3-year-old shoots have weak roots. They need to be grown a couple more years. Layers having roots more than 15 cm are well acclimatized. Acquired or grown hazel seedlings can be planted in spring or autumn. Pre-plant treatment of the plant consists in cutting off dead or broken roots and dipping them in a dung-clay mash, which protects against decay. Foliage that has fallen from hazel brings into the soil a full range of nutrients necessary for the culture. Therefore, in the planting pit for a seedling it is worth adding just such soil - from under a bush of an adult hazelnut - and humus. The seedling is carefully arranged in the hole, sprinkled with soil and, tamping, well shed. The root neck of the plant should rise 3-4 cm above the ground. The final stage of planting is to mulch the soil in the place where a plant such as hazel (hazel) was planted. Planting and care at this stage are not burdensome for the gardener.
Bush formation
Providing decorative shrubs does not cause much trouble to the gardener. It is practically not cut, removing only broken branches and unnecessary shoots. A bush is formed in 6-8 trunks and subsequently only maintain its appearance. A viable shrub is 70-90 years old, but bears fruit in the first 20 years. Therefore, from about this age, one should begin replacing the old trunks with a new shoot, each year trimming 2-3 trunks. Imitating a tree, one trunk is selected and 4-6 skeletal branches are formed at a half-meter height. Be sure to remove all basal shoots. The magnificent design of the garden plot is achieved at the minimum cost that the hazel decorative culture (hazel) requires. Planting and care, as well as cutting hazelnuts are simple manipulations, nevertheless bringing aesthetic satisfaction and a good harvest of nuts.