The Hazelnut Plant Catalog
Taking orders for 2017 shipment! See the blog for any updates.
Our NeoHybrid Hazelnuts are multi-generation hybrids from crosses between wild American hazels, wild beaked hazels, and European hazels. Badgersett's breeding work with these plants started in 1978, and our most advanced hybrids are now 5 and 6 generations beyond the species F1s. They are bushes, not trees. All plants sold are seedlings, so performance will vary. In other words, some seedlings of "Large" parents will bear smaller nuts, and some will bear larger. About 60% of seedlings strongly resemble the female parent. Yes, that's unusually high, but the observation comes from other researchers also.
These hazel bushes are generally 10–15 feet tall and 6–10 feet across at maturity. If neglected or stressed, they are likely to grow slowly for the first 1–3 years or longer while they are putting down deep roots. Rows should be spaced a minimum of 10 feet apart for machine harvest, and alternating spacings of about 12 and 16-18 are recommended for hand harvest. For best production plant 3 feet apart within the row, then thin and transplant to fill holes around years 5-8.
These bushes are absolutely cold hardy to Zone 4. Spring freezes will not affect the crop. We have many growers reporting success in zone 3, but commercial cropping there is still experimental.
Unless designated as Experimental, our hazels carry a lifetime replacement guarantee for any that ever die of Eastern Filbert Blight (EFB) (read our guarantee in detail). No one has yet requested any replacements under this guarantee- they're that EFB resistant.
Detailed planting and care instructions for your tubelings will be shipped with your order. Click here to read up on the instructions now.
Looking for something to eat? Visit our food nut order page.
For more detailed information, see the Hazel Info Pages, and for some quick answers check out the FAQ.
Catalog Table of Contents:
We take e-mail orders and accept secure online payment with credit/debit card through PayPal. See Ordering for details on how to place your order!
We take orders for plants up to 12 months in advance of desired shipping.
Prices are subject to change. All prices are honored according to the prices that are listed here at the time your order is placed. We will not increase your prices after you've made your order.
Because of limited availability, we cannot guarantee to fill all orders. See Additional Information.
NeoHybrid Hazelnut Buyer's Guide
Since our catalog is getting more options with our most recent research developments, here are some guidelines for a few kinds of plantings with specific goals. If you don't have very specific goals, or want a few to learn with, we suggest "Standard"! Keep in mind that a LOT more detailed information is available at the Short Course or on the Short Course DVDs.
For the Highest Production of kernel per acre, for bulk sale and processing, we suggest a mixture of Machine Picked, Just Plain, possibly some Medium and/or Large hazels, and a few Xtra Large because small production or no, people are impressed by big nuts. At least 15% Experimental or Machine Picked is recommended, and up to 50% or more depending on how agressive your culling will be.
For Local Human-Consumption Markets, same suggestions as for highest production above, possibly with a higher percentage of Large (including Experimental and Machine-Picked Large).
For Pick-Your-Own we recommend mostly Large, Medium and Xtra Large, about 30% or so Experimental. You may want to avoid Machine-Picked-Early material except where early ripeness is specifically desired, since those plants are most likely to drop the nuts off the bush before the people get there.
About Select Material. In many cases we suggest Select material if it is available and your budget allows. The parents of our Select tubelings have the best track records and most desirable characteristics of the over 1,600 individual plants in our database. Keep in mind, however that we have a backlog of harvest data not yet in the database, and there are more than a few plants currently tagged as "Experimental" that will be upgraded to "Select" as the databases are updated. Additionally, more than a few of these plants will no longer be called "Experimental" as their harvest data reaches the database. SO- we suggest allowing substitutions, particularly of "Experimental", for at least part of your "Select" order.
About Machine-Picked Material. 2013 marked the third year that we've harvested nuts for both eating and seed by machine (see the 2011 machine harvest video for some details on initial results). It's clear: this works well enough that machine harvest with this style of picker is definitely going to be a major direction for industry development. Also, in most cases it is already substantially less work to harvest by machine, even in our patchy research-oriented plantings.
For these reasons, we have integrated machine picked seed into most of our hazel seedling offerings. In the detailed catalog below you will find several specific kinds of machine picked seed, as well as indications for which tubeling types still come entirely from hand-picked seed. Medium and Large Nut Hazels may now contain some machine picked seed, from rows with sufficiently good and consistent performance that we are classifying the entire row as a particular class of parent plant. Currently all such rows are at Badgersett Farm 1 in Minnesota, but this may change with the 2014 harvest.
NeoHybrid Hazelnut Tubelings
Please see What is a Tubeling? if you are not familiar with this term. These plants are seedlings, classified based on characteristics of the female parent and, for older parents, known progeny performance. In our experience, about 60% of seedlings strongly resemble the female parent, the remainder being various kinds of better and worse.
Special Offerings
ST-Haz Standard Hazels1–10: $6.25 ea 11–100: $5.00 ea
101–1,000: $3.75 ea >1,000: $3.15 ea
Since we're a research operation, we offer a wide selection of hazel seedling types, and it can get confusing! Order our "Standard Hazels" and we'll send you what we've got. Availability and shipment on your requested date are most likely with this selection! A good deal for test plantings, and can be the right choice for part of your production plan as well. These are most likely to be Machine Picked or Experimental Mediums and Larges, and least likely to be Wildlife or Select material. Breeding IDs not available.
MP-Haz Machine Picked Hazels1–10: $7.00 ea 11–100: $5.60 ea
101–1,000: $4.20 ea >1,000: $3.50 ea
Only available from Badgersett! These plants are grown from nuts picked by machine, so they are more likely to be easily machinable themselves. This seed is graded for size, keeping the larger nuts. Most likely to be from parents in our latest breeding cycles, since those are the plantings with the greatest numbers of machine-ready bushes. Breeding IDs not available.
Selected Machine Picked Hazels (see below for product code)1–10: $7.50 ea 11–100: $6.00 ea
101–1,000: $4.50 ea >1,000: $3.75 ea
Take your pick of Early or Late harvest, Badgersett Farm or Illinois field origin. Differences between "Early" and "Late" are mostly genetic; very few "Late" nuts will have come off of the same parent bushes as "Early" nuts.
Early: First machine picking of the year. Advantages: these are nuts that came off the bushes at the first picking, before most pests have time to get to them, and early enough to beat most of the market. Disadvantages: In our experience so far, about 15-20% of these nuts were unripe at harvest, and therefore husking at harvest time involved losing or handling separately this harvest fraction. If you intend to keep, cure and dry your nuts in-husk for a week or two following harvest, this is a very small issue.
Late: Last machine picking of the year. Advantages: these nuts stayed on the bushes until the harvester made it for the last pass, then came off. They were not dropped in the wind or stolen by nut predators. In our experience, these have nearly all been ready for immediate husking when harvested late, requiring less post-harvest storage and paving the way for the picker-husker combine we've got on the drawing board. Disadvantages: These nuts did NOT come off at the early harvest, and so were either unripe or just not coming off at that point; beating the market is less likely with these plants
Badgersett Farm 1: Includes seed from selected rows of female parents at Badgersett Farm 1 in SE Minnesota, with a wider selection of both female and pollen parent genetics. Advantages: Greater genetic diversity should allow for adaptation of your planting over a broader range of soil, climate, and pest conditions. A few more advanced breeding lines are in this mix, as well as our time-tested older plants. Disadvantages: This greater diversity might result in a higher needed cull rate for a particular level of field performance, and is likely to result in a broader range of harvest and nut characteristics.
Badgersett Illinois Farm: includes seed from our expansion farm in Illinois, with a fairly advanced but much more restricted gene pool. Advantages: Both female and pollen parents are all Class 3 breeding material, subjected to full selection up to that point. No pollen from the broader base of diversity in this cloud, and very little from local wild material. This should have a substantially more uniform performance than the material from Farm 1. Disadvantages: the more narrow genetic base may make this group less adaptable to conditions differing substantially from northern Illinois. Also, these plants are overall younger than those at Farm 1, and there is a slightly higher percentage of them which are duds that haven't petered out yet. None of these parents has yet been through a coppice cycle.
Product codes for Selected Machine Picked Hazels (all prices are the same, listed above).
- MP-BE-Haz : Badgersett Farm 1, Early Must accept substitutions.
- MP-BL-Haz : Badgersett Farm 1, Late Must accept substitutions.
- MP-IE-Haz : Illinois Farm, Early Must accept substitutions.
- MP-IL-Haz : Illinois Farm, Late Must accept substitutions.
Regular Guaranteed Hazels
Parents of these plants meet all our criteria for plant health and crop performance. Most of these seedlings are from parent plants with six years or more of production records in our database. Lifetime replacement guarantee for any that ever die of Eastern Filbert Blight (EFB). Available in the following classes of nut size:
W-Haz Wildlife Hazels1–10: $6.50 ea 11–100: $5.20 ea
101–1,000: $3.90 ea >1,000: $3.25 ea
Our Wildlife parent bushes bear nuts that are actually smaller than wild American hazelnuts and with thinner shells. Seedlings are from healthy bushes with large crops more reliable than wild hazels. The nuts are small enough to serve as food for quail, in addition to pheasant, grouse, turkey, chipmunks, squirrels, and everything else under the sun, up to and including bears. First-rate wildlife cover and wildlife food crop. These plants also make excellent snow fence or windbreak. A bargain! All wildlife seed for 2013 tubelings was picked by hand.
M-Haz Medium Nut Hazels1–10: $7.25 ea 11–100: $5.80 ea
101–1,000: $4.35 ea >1,000: $3.65 ea
These are usually more productive than other nut sizes; you're likely to get the most kernel production per acre from Mediums. The nuts can be small for the in-shell market but easily large enough for processing or marketing as cleaned nutmeats. May contain machine-picked material. For hand-picked seed, see below:
M-HP-Haz Medium Nut Hazels1–10: $7.75 ea 11–100: $6.20 ea
101–1,000: $4.65 ea >1,000: $3.90 ea
These are usually more productive than other nut sizes; you're likely to get the most kernel production per acre from Mediums. The nuts can be small for the in-shell market but easily large enough for processing or marketing as cleaned nutmeats. These tubelings are from hand-picked seed only.
L-Haz Large Nut Hazels1–10: $8.50 ea 11–100: $6.80 ea
101–1,000: $5.10 ea >1,000: $4.25 ea
These plants do not produce nuts as large as the big Oregon hazelnuts, but they're big enough to sell in-shell. Some can be as productive as Mediums. Supply is limited! May contain machine-picked material. For hand-picked seed, see below:
L-HP-Haz Large Nut Hazels1–10: $8.85 ea 11–100: $7.00 ea
101–1,000: $5.30 ea >1,000: $4.40 ea
These plants do not produce nuts as large as the big Oregon hazelnuts, but they're big enough to sell in-shell. Some can be as productive as Mediums. Supply is limited! These tubelings are from hand-picked seed only.
XL-Haz Xtra Large Nut Hazels1–10: $9.50 ea 11–100: $7.60 ea
101–1,000: $5.70 ea >1,000: $4.75 ea
These plants produce the largest nuts—some as large as the big Oregon hazels—of any guaranteed plants we now have available. Good to have a couple in your planting for show, because people are impressed by big nuts. Tend to be less productive than Larges and Mediums, though. Supply is very limited! Please read the article Does Size Matter? before ordering!
Select-Parent Guaranteed Hazels
Select parents available will differ from year to year, but these are our very best plants and best parents. The seed for these tubelings is from plants with the longest consistant records; highest, most reliable production; and best nuts. Some parents are designated Select due to one or two particularly outstanding characteristics, and we have started designating a few Select parents due to particularly consistent good performance of their seedlings in field trials. Lifetime replacement guarantee for any that ever die of Eastern Filbert Blight (EFB). Availability is always limited. All Select seed picked by hand until further notice.
W-S-Haz Wildlife Select Hazels1–10: $8.20 ea 11–100: $6.55 ea
>100: $5.25 ea
Tubelings from parents with Wildlife characteristics, which may have exceedingly heavy crops, very thin shells, or stick on the bush even after full ripeness (keeping the food available for more species for a longer time).
M-S-Haz Medium Nut Select Hazels1–10: $9.45 ea 11–100: $7.55 ea
>100: $6.05 ea
These are often our most productive plants.
L-S-Haz Large Nut Select Hazels1–10: $11.05 ea 11–100: $8.85 ea
>100: $6.65 ea
These are our best, most productive Large Nut parents. They do not produce nuts as large as the big Oregon hazelnuts, but they're big enough to sell in-shell.
XL-S-Haz Xtra Large Nut Select Hazels1–10: $12.35 ea 11–100: $9.90 ea
>100: $7.40 ea
These are our best, most productive Xtra Large Nut parents and produce the largest nuts, some as large as the big Oregon hazels. Please read the article Does Size Matter? before ordering!
Please be aware, we have extremely few XL-S parents; we recommend accepting substitutions, ordering Experimental XL or Experimental-Select, or ordering MORE than 12 months in advance.
Experimental Hybrid Hazels
Basically, the hazels above (our "Guaranteed" Hazels) are our workhorses, and these Experimental Hazels are racehorse mamas crossed to a workhorse papa, which makes them plants that are interesting but somewhat unpredictable. Although these are not covered by our lifetime EFB replacement guarantee, now most of our Experimental parents have that rating because we don't have enough years of field data on them to back them with that absolute guarantee. Many of our newer-generation Experimental plants are re-classed as guaranteed when we have enough data.
We sell these because we feel they are low-risk and well worth trying. They are not guaranteed against Eastern Filbert Blight (EFB), even though most have proven EFB-resistant or -"tolerant". These are seedlings from plants in our breeding projects which have superior nut characteristics but also some known or possible susceptibility to EFB. They are never from plants that are severely affected by the disease.
We believe that having some EFB in your planting is highly desirable. It gives the bugs and microbes that attack EFB somewhere to live, among other things. We currently recommend any large planting consist of approximately 30% Experimentals. For smaller plantings, if you are seriously interested in establishing your own hazel fields for nut production, you should consider some of these for the increased genetic diversity and for the excellent chance that some of these will be very superior producers. We plant thousands of these ourselves!
To Order Experimental Hybrid Hazels
Specify "experimental" on the line item in your order form, and add an "E" to the beginning of the product code. All size classes are available, in both standard and Select. Machine Picked material is currently all "Experimental". Availability is usually better for Experimental material than Guaranteed, because these are seedlings from our newer, larger plantings, with more seed to work with. Prices are exactly the same as for the corresponding class of our Standard Guaranteed and SelectEFB Resistant Hybrids.
The product code designation for Experimental material is an "E" before the rest: M-Haz is medium, EM-Haz is Experimental Medium, EM-S-Haz is Experimental Medium Select.
Hazel Seed Nuts
No longer shipping seed for the 2014-15 season; now taking orders for seed from the 2015 harvest
For the first time in over 20 years, we're offering hazelnuts for seed. If you've got the facilities to put these nuts through stratification, and can get them going while providing effective protection against the massive array of nut eating pests, these could work for you.
That said, please read why we haven't sold seed for the past twenty years! There are really a lot of things that regularly go wrong; mostly they get eaten by mice.
Seed nuts are currently:
- -Only available as "Standard" genetics. Most likely to be Machine-Picked, Medium or Large.
- -Must be ordered by November 15.
- -Shipped in late November, without having been given cold hours. We keep seed from drying out hard after harvest, so they will not have entered deep (years-long) dormancy. You will still need to keep them moist and cool in order to allow germination in the spring.
- -Not guaranteed to germinate, since we cannot control your storage conditions over the winter.
- -Not shipped at any other time of year, since our facilities get the nuts germinating in February, when it is too cold to ship actively germinating seed.
- -Subject to the same quarantines as the plants.
Seed is sold on a "viable at shipping" basis. If you order 100 nuts, we will send you enough nuts that you will get at least 100 that are alive when we ship them. If they are treated well over the winter, you could expect 60%-80% of these to germinate.
SD-Haz Standard Hazel Seed1–100: $2.00 ea
101–1,000: $1.75 ea >1,000: $1.50 ea
For shipping information, order terms, bare-root dormant options, and to place your order, please click here to visit our ordering details page.