IMPORTANT ORDER NOTE: If you order any other seed packets, seed garlic, or anything else on our website in the same order as hazelnut seeds, these other items will not ship until we are ready to ship the hazelnut seeds all together in the same order!!! Which should be no later than November 15th. So please place two separate items if you need any other items immediately.
SHIPPING RESTRICTION NOTICE: By law we are not shipping hazelnut seeds to California, Oregon, or Washington. We are also not shipping them internationally.
IMPORTANT NOTE ON SHIPPING: We are listing these hazelnut seeds for sale early this fall, with the intention of shipping before freezing temperatures. Hazel seeds cannot freeze.
IMPORTANT SEED STORAGE NOTE: Seeds will ship in the fall, fully hydrated and without having received cold stratification ("chill hours"). Do not let the seeds dry out hard, which may send them into a multiple-years-long dormancy. Hazelnut seeds require 2-3 months of cool (32-40F), moist, moderately ventilated storage before germinating in the spring. For small seed lots, the easiest way to to this is to store them in a vented plastic bag (Ziplocs with some holes/slits cut into them, for example) with some moist peat - moist enough that you can barely wring a little water out of the peat, not sopping wet - in the refrigerator. To germinate, after 2-3 months of cold stratification, take out of the fridge and keep them warm and moist (75-80F is ideal). However you choose to store, stratify, germinate, and plant the seeds, your setting MUST BE RODENT AND BIRD-PROOF. Galvanized steel hardware cloth is your friend!
Badgersett/EFN Chestnut and Hazelnut Limit Agreement: By purchasing these seeds you are agreeing to the terms and conditions found at this link.
Pricing options:
10 seeds for $20 ($2 each)
25 seeds for $43.75 ($1.75 each)
50 seeds for $75 ($1.50 each)
100 seeds for $125 ($1.25 each)
200 seeds for $200 ($1 each)
300 seeds for $300 ($1 each)
400 seeds for $400 ($1 each)
500 seeds for $500 ($1 each)
Corylus complex hybrids (C. americana x C. avellana x C. cornuta)
The parent plants of these seeds are mostly in the realm of 8-10 feet tall, so we are calling them medium/short bush.
Origin: Southeast Minnesota
Improvement Status: Cultivated, semi-domesticated
Life Cycle: Perennial
Badgersett's hazelnut hybrid swarm is a mix of wild American hazelnuts (C. americana) from Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Wisconsin; heritage European hazelnut (C. avellana) cultivars from the Mediterranean and Central Europe; and a wild beaked hazelnut (C. cornuta) from Peace River, Alberta; plus whatever wild pollen has managed to float into the various breeding plots over the last century. Initial F1 crosses between the various species were made by amateur breeders in the 1910s-1950s. Our seed parents are at least 3 generations of selection and recombination (most are 4 or 5) past the initial F1 species cross.
Hazelnuts are a delicious, nutritious, calorically dense nut crop borne on rugged, adaptable, medium-size shrubs. Native to much of the temperate Northern Hemisphere, hazelnuts have been a prized and highly sought-after food source - both for people and wildlife - wherever they're found, since time immemorial.
Our open-pollinated, hybrid hazelnut seeds come from bushes selected by Philip Rutter of Badgersett Research Farm, from a large expansion planting in NW Illinois of seedlings of some of Badgersett's most promising breeding lines, originally planted in 2003. Badgersett's decades of breeding work has been to hybridize two species of hazelnut native to North America - the American and the beaked hazelnut - with the European hazelnut, in order to create a resilient crop that combines the useful qualities of each species and is adaptable to both small and large-scale agricultural production. We're helping to continue that work by making this seed available to the general public.
Seed is selected based on visual assessment of total kernel productivity, kernel size, and the overall characteristics of the maternal breeding line, including bush vigor, vegetative health, and pest and disease resistance. Our most important criteria is high total kernel productivity with adequate kernel size. Our seed parents have nuts large enough for currently existing mechanical cracking and processing machinery, but most are smaller than commercial European hazelnuts. Most seed parent bushes have kernels that average 0.5-0.65 grams when dried hard. A few will be larger.
See here for a detailed explanation of the selection criteria for these seeds.
Short bushes have a mature height of 8-10'. Their size, shape, and stem thickness tend to resemble the American hazelnut more than European. Based on the performance of the parent breeding lines, mature bush height appears to be relatively heritable, but there will be variation - some "short" seeds will make "tall" plants, and some "tall" seeds will make "short" plants.
