Mid-April to the end of May is one of the busiest times of the year for us here at Forest Ag and on the Farm. During those 40 or so days, we ship 99% of all our nursery stock which includes edible woody crops such as pine nuts, chestnuts, kiwi's, a wide variety of tree and shrub fruit and (of course) Hazelnuts!
We've been busy grading and packing seedling orders as well as designing layouts for other growers and custom treeplanting as well.
The Photo's that you see here are some of our "average" hazelnut seedlings. We raise field-grown 1yr old bare-root, dormant nursery stock standard to the treeplanting trade. We pride ourselves on the large, highly developed root systems on our nursery stock. Large, vigorous roots are a good sign when buying nursery stock. These roots are 18" + long by around 3ft wide. Large, vigorous roots planted into moist spring soil are quite capable of "chasing" the water down as the surface soil dries in the course of the summer. Check out how big those roots are!
Most folks plant ForestAg hazelnuts directly into mowed sod. Some folks eliminate the sod in the fall with an herbicide application, others use over-the-top herbicides as recommended by their local DNR Forester. We have never encountered a site that required tillage in order for these plants to thrive and most folks merely mow on either side of the row 3 or so times during the season for maintenance.
We have never had to water such large plants, though if you are planting on a sandy site, you might want to consider using T-tape drip irrigation tape. It's extremely affordable and one roll has 4,000ft of drip tape. T-tape will gravity-flow from a pickup truck or hay wagon mounted tank for sites not near a hose bib. T-tape is typically used only one season, but as long as you keep an eye out for leaks (mouse nibbles!) and seal them up with duct tape, you can get away with 2 or 3 years of use before the leaks get out of hand.
ForestAg hazelnut plants can be planted using a typical tree transplanter. Most Wisconsin DNR Foresters have treeplanters for rent, or at least they have lists of tree planting contractors whom you can hire. ForestAg will custom plant any sized order at reasonable rates, but why not hire your local pro's ? !
On most mid-sized planting jobs, we use a tool called a hoe-dad. (available for $75.00+/- at Forestrysuppliers.com) Matt, (the fellow in these pictures) can plant between 500 and 600 plants per day with a hoe-dad. My personal best is 1200/day and "the beast" Josh (a migratory tree planter) could plant 2000 in a day. (while alternating arms and tree spacing PERFECT)
An inexperienced crew of 3 can operate a DNR transplanter and comfortably plant 3,000 in a day. Experienced crews can easily do twice that!
Now that our plants are all in, we're getting ready for our "summer vacation". Not all that much goes on in the hazelnuts in late June and July, so we relax a bit and get ready for the rush of fall!