Lottie and Hazel

To be frank I am nuts about my Hazel but then so too are my rivals, who could not care less about her until they want a nibble. I do not want to cast any aspersions; Hazel is straight and you know where you stand. I am prepared to be open minded and share Hazel, but last week it was a battle to get anywhere as my rivals are with her from sunrise to sunset. I have resorted to chasing them around and even within the bush where they are hiding, threatening them with a trap or with squirrel pie, but they know I am bluffing. Finally I decided to throw windfall apples at them to drive them away, as they scampered up the tall Ash tree overlooking my allotment.

Once the heat of the chase was over and the squirrels were laughing at me on high, I realised that my neighbours were becoming concerned at finding rotten apples falling around them. Eventually I did gather some Hazel nuts that my rivals had dropped or were too low for them and decided to develop a new strategy for next year.

My daughter’s boyfriend told me that, when he was growing up in Ireland, he and his friends would go into the woods and use the straight Hazel wood as arrows for their bows. Now before my prejudice ran wild and I thought of the Irish troubles and conjured up images of an unknown Irish indigenous movement, I remembered that his family was active in the peace movement. But may be there is a good idea here that I will come back to.

Apart from squirrels, growing Hazel as a hedge on Lottie is easy and very satisfying. The catkins already begin to form in August, their cream colour and the tender tassels give interest in the winter and early hopes of next year’s harvest. Kept to a green or purple 10ft bush, Hazel can soften the harshness of the wind for Lottie throughout the year, providing cover for hedgehogs and frogs in the winter and offering ideal nesting places in the summer for small birds like wrens.

The time I planted Hazel was in the autumn, when the soil is warm but the sun is waning, with a good feed of phosphate to encourage strong root growth.

The seedlings initially grow gradually as the root structure becomes established:

but after a couple of years they pick up pace, particularly if given an organic feed such as dried chicken manure. Then I can either fully coppice the bush or prune out the central growth , remembering that the nuts grow on old wood; these off cuts make ideal canes for climbing beans , while I chopped short the ends to make free supports for peas and small plants.

I have decided on a new strategy to level the playing field with the squirrels by keeping the bushes low, picking the nuts when green and I am now encouraging others to see the attraction in Hazel, so that there is a glut for the squirrels and there will be some left for me. If that does not work, next year I will get some training in archery. It might also help to reduce the long waiting list for allotments. . .