All plant orders is the long awaited, but none has been as exciting as this year's supply of Westergaard's nursery in Denmark. The nursery specializes in nut trees and other edibles from shrubs and trees. After a visit there in autumn 2013 we ordered a number of exciting plants to Stjärnsund.
Lars Westergaard who runs the nursery has high hopes for hybridhasslar for our northern climate. They are intersections between the common hazel (Corylus avellana or C. top) and Turkish hazel tree (Corylus colurna) in various proportions.
Varieties OSU20 derived for example from the United States and has 12,5% trädhasselgener.
The first custom sort that Westergaard has developed units SC215 and is a cross between 'OSU20′ and '88Q', which means that it has 18,75% genes from Turkish hazel trees. It is said to be premature bearing and rightly one of our copies already a few nötklasar again. In clusters you can clearly see the Turkish trädhasselns genetic influences.
During the visit in Westergaard nursery Lars showed us the tree he had the greatest hopes. It grew like a tree, with only one strain, gave fruit early and were both healthy, hardy and rikbärande. The tree had not received a name yet, but we took the opportunity to pre-order the first production. Now that the trees have reached, it turns out that the variety has been named 'Arie # 1'. It contains the whole 50% Turkish hazel trees and it will be exciting to follow its development in our climate.
All three varieties are grafted onto a rootstock of Turkish hazel trees, which is clearly visible in the picture below:
Speaking grafting: In a previous posts I wrote about the fabled genuine walnut 'Loiko'. Lars Westergaard's probably one of the most knowledgeable in the grafting of nut trees in the Nordic countries (how he does you can see in this avsnittet av Bonderøven, 18 minutes into the program) and he got the scions of a Loiko tree by my friend Martin Gustafsson few years ago. Now the first Loiko clones finished and one of them has come to Stjärnsund. It was planted in the garden Diversity, Another exciting woodland garden that is growing up in Stjärnsund!
Westergaard work with frayed afraid hybrids are among the most exciting thing that happens with the trees here in the north. It will be very interesting to follow your experience with these hazel hybrids in the Swedish climate.
So interesting and fun that it will more varieties of nut trees adapted to our climate.
It will be exciting to follow and eventually buy to prospective forest garden / nyttolynden.
Inger