Hazel produces nuts on wood grownin the previous year, so don't coppice every year or you'll never have nuts and only have pea sticks and never bean poles.
I used to coppice our hazel every 3 to 4 years, depending on the size the regrowth had attained and what I wanted to use it for. Neighbours used to coppice theirs every 7 years; that produced very sturdy poles.
This is about 4-5 years growth on my Hazel (taken today):
It's about 4 metres high by 3m wide and will be coppiced this winter. Plenty of nuts forming but like most others here find, it's the squirrels who get them, not me! Closer pic showing nuts:
One of the best things about Hazel is the Catkins (pic taken in January):
A trowel in the hand is worth a thousand lost under a bush.
Really good hearing your views. At this stage I'm planning to buy 2-year-old bare root trees for delivery in the dormant season. How long after that would I prune? Is it best to cultivate a multistemmed bush or a single stem small tree?
BobTheGardener - your pictures developed on the screen after I sent my last post - your 4-5 year bush is lovely!! that's the sort of thing I would like, but not sure I want 4m high. Brilliant Work
Thanks GD - they do grow very fast though! You could keep some control by coppicing (cutting back to about 15cm above the ground) a third of the oldest stems each year in the Winter and the remaining stems should produce nuts, so you'd only lose a third of the crop by doing that (the new stems won't bear nuts in their first year.)
I recommend that you let them grow unpruned for 3 years before you start coppicing them though, so they develop a good root system.
A trowel in the hand is worth a thousand lost under a bush.
This is helpful and so I'm very appreciative of the advice. Coppicing seems easy enough. I know that you mention that coppicing is a good method of keeping control of the tree, but are there other benefits to coppicing as opposed to cultivating a single trunked small tree? If I really want to keep it to 2.5m tall is coppicing better than cultivating a single trunked tree? Many thanks.
One benefit is that a coppiced tree will live much longer than a single trunk (natural lifespan of a Hazel is about 50 years) - some coppiced Hazels are hundreds of years old and another is that you get a free supply of poles and pea supports.
It might be difficult to train one as a single trunk as Hazel's natural habit is to grow as a multi-stemmed shrub/tree. When you need to prune it to keep it within your stated bounds, it is very likely to keep throwing up new stems from below ground, so you'd need to keep on top of that. It's certainly possible though as many young filbert and cobnut trees are supplied that way.
A trowel in the hand is worth a thousand lost under a bush.
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Hazel produces nuts on wood grownin the previous year, so don't coppice every year or you'll never have nuts and only have pea sticks and never bean poles.
I used to coppice our hazel every 3 to 4 years, depending on the size the regrowth had attained and what I wanted to use it for. Neighbours used to coppice theirs every 7 years; that produced very sturdy poles.
Friends who were thatchers coppiced theirs every 3 - 4 years to produce the spars they needed http://coppice-products.co.uk/product-type/thatching/
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
This is about 4-5 years growth on my Hazel (taken today):
It's about 4 metres high by 3m wide and will be coppiced this winter. Plenty of nuts forming but like most others here find, it's the squirrels who get them, not me! Closer pic showing nuts:
One of the best things about Hazel is the Catkins (pic taken in January):
Really good hearing your views. At this stage I'm planning to buy 2-year-old bare root trees for delivery in the dormant season. How long after that would I prune? Is it best to cultivate a multistemmed bush or a single stem small tree?
BobTheGardener - your pictures developed on the screen after I sent my last post - your 4-5 year bush is lovely!! that's the sort of thing I would like, but not sure I want 4m high. Brilliant Work
Thanks GD - they do grow very fast though! You could keep some control by coppicing (cutting back to about 15cm above the ground) a third of the oldest stems each year in the Winter and the remaining stems should produce nuts, so you'd only lose a third of the crop by doing that (the new stems won't bear nuts in their first year.)
I recommend that you let them grow unpruned for 3 years before you start coppicing them though, so they develop a good root system.
This is helpful and so I'm very appreciative of the advice. Coppicing seems easy enough. I know that you mention that coppicing is a good method of keeping control of the tree, but are there other benefits to coppicing as opposed to cultivating a single trunked small tree? If I really want to keep it to 2.5m tall is coppicing better than cultivating a single trunked tree? Many thanks.
One benefit is that a coppiced tree will live much longer than a single trunk (natural lifespan of a Hazel is about 50 years) - some coppiced Hazels are hundreds of years old and another is that you get a free supply of poles and pea supports.
It might be difficult to train one as a single trunk as Hazel's natural habit is to grow as a multi-stemmed shrub/tree. When you need to prune it to keep it within your stated bounds, it is very likely to keep throwing up new stems from below ground, so you'd need to keep on top of that. It's certainly possible though as many young filbert and cobnut trees are supplied that way.