The type of hazelnuts you grow, how many you grow, and how you grow them depends greatly on your objectives.
1. In Our Experience There are Four Types of Growers. Which One(s) Are You?
Homesteader: Your interest is primarily growing hazelnuts for just you, your family, and maybe a few close friends and neighbors.
Land Steward: Your main interest is planting hazelnuts to improve the wildlife habitat, biodiversity, and soil and water quality of your land.
Botanist: You are a plant nerd and proud of it. You like to observe and collect data and are interested in helping evaluate and find new and exciting germplasm.
Commercial Grower: You want to make money growing hazelnuts.
2. What Type of Hazelnut Plants Should You Grow? The type of grower you want to be will impact the type of plants you grow.
Homesteader: If your interest is a reliable supply of quality hazelnuts year after year, then you'll want to grow proven high-performing varieties (cultivars). You'll also need at least two different compatible varieties as hazelnuts do not self-pollinate. Currently, the cultivars proven for the Midwest are in very short supply. If you don't want to wait, you can always plant seedling-type hazelnuts, but you should expect variable yields and nut quality.
Land-Steward: If your primary goal is improving wildlife habitat and helping the environment, then we recommend you plant a diversity of seedling-type hazelnuts. If you want to plant only the native hazelnuts, then make sure you are buying pure American (Corylus americana) or Beaked (Corylus cornuta) seedlings. American hazelnuts require full sun. Beaked can tolerate some shade.
Botanist: We need growers like you to help us measure and evaluate hazelnut germplasm, especially half-sibling and full-sibling seedling lines. Consider joining our Hazelnut Improvement Program (HIP). As a HIPster, you'll purchase seedlings from known progeny families and then collect performance data from them as they grow. You'll get plenty of nuts to enjoy from the plants, but expect variable production and traits. You should also expect to lose some plants to Eastern Filbert Blight, a fungal disease native to the Upper Midwest, to which we are working to develop plant resistance.
Commercial Grower: If your goal is to make money growing hazelnuts, then you'll want to plant cultivars with proven high performance in the Midwest. Such plants are in very limited supply right now. Check out the ordering information page to stay up to date. While you wait for the cultivars, we do recommend you start planting seedling-type hazelnuts in border and pollinator rows.
3. How Many Plants Can You Manage? No matter how big you want to get someday, we recommend you start commensurate with your prior experience establishing and managing woody plants.
Homesteader: Experienced growers will tell you that harvesting 1 acre (about 480 plants) by hand is hard work, but doable. More than that and it becomes a dreaded chore and most likely, friends and family will stop returning your calls after a few years of "helping". That said, if you're super hard-working or have a big family, 1-3 acres is probably doable. On the other hand, the critters (squirrels, chipmunks, mice, blue jays) love hazelnuts and if you only plant a few plants you'll lose all the hazelnuts. We recommend a minimum of 20 plants. Remember, hazelnuts do not self-pollinate so you'll need multiple compatible cultivars or seedling-type hazelnuts.
Land-Steward: The sky's the limit. The more you plant the greater the positive impact you'll make. It's always a good idea to start small, however, to make sure your systems for site preparation, planting, irrigation, and weed management are effective and something you like doing. Financial assistance may be available through the USDA-Natural Resource Conservation Service. You might also check with non-profits like the Savanna Institute that can help with planting design.
Botanist: There really is no limit on how many you could grow, it just depends on how much time and energy you have available to establish the plants and measure things like height, width, and yield. We recommend a minimum of 100 plants.
Commercial Grower: Unless you have access to cheap harvesting labor, growing hazelnuts for profit requires a mechanical harvester. The volume of nuts and gross revenues from sale of those nuts need to cover the harvester cost and that cost depends on whether you own it, rent it, or pay someone to harvest for you. For now, we are recommending at least 5 acres of production if you are pursuing for-profit production. At the recommended 450 plants/ac that works out to a minimum of 2,250 plants. Be sure to check out UMHDI's enterprise budgeting tool. One reason we are being strategic in deploying the cultivars in geographic clusters is to make it easier to share harvesting equipment.
4. What is Your Establishment and Production Plan? No matter your reason for growing hazelnuts, it is crucial to have a plan to establish the plants and manage them for the long term. Thankfully, the UMHDI researchers have some excellent publications and videos all about establishing and managing hazelnuts. There are many different strategies and tools to make it happen, but three things are essential during the establishment phase: protection from herbivory (deer, mice, rabbits), a way to efficiently water when things get dry, and good weed control. The Savanna Institute currently offers Free Technical Assistance to help growers development plans.