This abridged article updates the TreeCropper 44 article "What we have on Hazels", from December 2005.
Murray and Anne welcomed us to Wairata, where family have farmed for around 100 years.
Rainfall is high at around 2500mm per year, or 200 inches, well spread throughout year, including during harvest time.
Of 575ha about 100ha is native bush. With an interest in sustainable land use, trees featured early. Hazels were a chosen crop, growing and cropping well, of acceptable quality, could be harvested, dried and stored locally allowing shipping to processing plants when required without coolstorage.
Planting began in 1982, but a lack of information resulted in much of the time to date being spent on research rather than growing for cropping. Murray was able to focus on the hazel nursery since about 1983 but this has been declining due to a South Island pre-occupation with growing Whiteheart variety, where it propagates easily. Growers there are learning that the better survival of his trees is worth the extra cost of freighting them south; there is unfortunately little co-ordinated growing in the North Island. The survivability of trees is going to be part of a research project.
There is over 1ha of nursery (the jungle) which is now too big to manage since some South Island planting schemes were abandoned, so there are many big trees to be removed from the nursery this year. Testing his faith in a hazelnut industry future, Murray recognised there was a substantial amount of fairly simple research required to be done, such as why some 60% of new plantings down south are dying. At the recent opening of a south island factory Murray was perturbed that the management were focused on the factory, while he reckoned the chances of hazels becoming a major industry were only 50 – 50 unless the research was done soon. With a scenario at year 4 of still 60% trees dying and with first crop at year 8, then that would not be an economic crop. Shareholders of a co-op factory were likely to have pulled out almost all their trees, dead, before achieving a crop, unless these problems were solved. It would be most unfortunate if the factory failed for simple lack of research investment now.
Looking into research funding, ...(see full report - members only)
Gaining research funding is crucial.
At this stage we viewed a demonstration of two nut harvesters, identical Ciffarelli models except that Maurice Denton had discarded the back-pack mounting and built a pneumatic-tyred trolley for it, with many other refinements to vastly improve its usability in long days of harvesting - more info...
This variety planting area was begun in 1982 with ...
Another problem with harvesting was the heavy leaf litter in recent years, due to the arrival of hazel leaf miner. This was being realised as a major problem which also needed research to solve, after much skepticism from the south...
Possums were normally seldom seen but became a problem once the nuts began to fall, when half a dozen could be culled each and every night.
Harvested nuts were ...
We looked at some harvesting nets stretched between rows of trees...
While sheep were unprofitable they at least provided a return in controlling suckers and grass, and were more "sustainable" than using heavy chemicals.
The nets were expensive, but alternative fabrics (grapevine, windbreak cloth) had been used by Jim Jolly and others, especially desirable in organic orchards. In their case the nets were laid flat on the ground, the nuts windrowed by WWOOFers so a tractor harvester could be used.
Information regarding the net fabrics used had not been collected, like the temperature data that many growers had recorded by diverse methods over the years - again, there were no resources available to do this work.
Maurice Denton mentioned he had managed to get a clear orchard floor before nut fall by using his ride-on mower - many passes over days of work starting with the blade up high initially - but was very pleased to have removed almost all the leaf litter, twigs and sheep marbles to make the vacuum harvester use possible. Murray endeavored to keep animals out of his orchard from Christmas, and mowed the grass several times to clear the dung and litter in the largely un-netted area of orchard.
To do more reparation work on his orchard, Murray has restricted his operations by only propagating to order for this winter, instead of speculating what orders might be and over-propagating.
We looked at some pruning results. Murray anticipated a pruning system whereby ...
We had a brief recap of the hazel reproductive parts - hazels do everything in the spring, the male pollen-producing catkins are set and start growing by christmas. The female flowers, just little buds, have already formed. Now, late summer, it is difficult to distinguish the flower buds from the leaf buds. Murray shows where he will bring the tree height down to, to admit light and encourage lower growth...
We looked at the leaf miner damage, and Murray described their behaviour - the mite flies in drunkenly, staggers over the leaf and eventually lays an egg; the larvae hatch inside the leaf and they eat from the inside destroying the leaf which falls prematurely. A systemic insecticide might kill the larvae inside the leaf but was not desirable with nuts filling at the same time...
We paused to look at fodder trees; grafted honey locusts of a few varieties with big crops of pods occasionally. Dotted around the paddocks to produce shade they were wonderful, but to harvest regular fodder they would have to be regularly maintained - pruned to half their present height for accessibility probably, which again was not a big priority on the farm. The wood is very strong and durable, with a cross-weave fibre very difficult to break.
We saw fodder willow which had big silvery leaves and was quite attractive.
Held-over larger trees did not respond well to heavy corrective pruning, compared to young trees which recovered with less risk of disease in their formative years. We looked at some plum trees gradually succumbing to the root exudation from black walnut trees nearby, and some areas intended for propagating benches near many other interesting species, including some heritage pears. Leftover large hazel trees had been planted in hedgerows with other trees such as oaks, American ash, and maples all used to demark different hazel varieties in the rows.
Murray was dubious about grafted hazels, as there wasn't a standard rootstock - grafting onto a weak rootstock eg Whiteheart tended to yield a weak tree above. Of 4 samples of each variety...
So, by selection process... Three years from seedlings he expected nuts from his hazels, or they were generally removed from the trial unless they showed other interesting properties.
Murray expanded on his plans to spread out onto the nearby hillside...
There were other trees to look at in passing. Alders, walnuts, oaks, wild hazels including contorta. We abandoned plans to look at the back block plantings due to time constraints.
Barcelona, Tondo Romana and Whiteheart were still best varieties to plant. Whiteheart needed replacing with an easier tree, but meanwhile the industry was geared for it. Pollinisers were critical in a warm climate with a pruned tree, allowing yields as good as in a year of good winter chilling - assuming plenty of light and fruiting wood. For the home garden there were a host of good varieties mentioned.
We discussed the lack of a North Island processing plant.
A Palmerston North entrepreneur had wanted to set up a cracking plant to crack nuts on behalf, but at $2 per kilo it was too expensive.
Growers would not plant until a processing plant was available - a chicken and egg situation.
How had the grower co-op had happened down south?
People got together and bought $5000 shares each; within 5 years the factory was built. With the plant in existance and actively canvassing for grower-shareholders, participants were found who were willing to plant 6000 trees and buy 5000 shares. They now need to prove they can produce 3 to 4 tonnes per hectare per year as soon as possible.
New Zealand hazelnuts had a good reputation; chefs like Peta Mathias preferred them...
We moved to another orchard area; white peaches which don't get curly-leaf and fool rosellas by not being yellow; raisin trees; fodder willows with silver leaves which yellowed into winter; silver poplars; hickories for durable timbers; various uncommon oaks; yacon; chinese maples; and more.
It was a big day; big on travel, big hill country, big amounts of information proved to be a lot to take in so this article was transcribed in detail as a fuller record of the astonishing knowledge Murray has of hazelnuts in particular, which he shared with us.