When to prune hazelnut trees?
- Botanical name
- Corylus avellana
- Family
- Betulaceae
Hazelnut trees are pruned from January to March. They are planted from October to March. They are harvested from September to October.
Hazelnut trees are woody perennials. The edible parts are the seeds.
A single hazel bears nothing. A second plant goes in beside it, another variety or a seedling of the same species.
Renewal pruning means cutting the old shoots off at ground level, and the bush sends up new ones from the stool. That keeps the hazel lower than it would grow on its own.
Hazelnuts are ripe once the husk around the nut turns yellow. They do not ripen all at once and the ripe ones fall by themselves, so they are gathered in several rounds.
Hazelnut trees through the year
- pruning
- planting
- harvest
In short
Growing conditions
Are hazelnut trees toxic to cats and dogs?
No. Hazelnut trees are not toxic to cats and dogs.
Pests and diseases
Listed here is every problem for which the sources name this plant as a host. The problems are not listed in order of how common they are.
- Signs
- Colonies of small aphids sit on the shoot tips and the underside of the leaves. The leaf curls and puckers, and sticky honeydew is left on everything below. The viruses they carry are more dangerous than the feeding itself.
- Prevention
- Go easy on nitrogen, because soft sappy growth is what aphids are looking for. Encourage the predators (ladybirds, lacewings, parasitic wasps). Use a reflective mulch, which puts them off settling, and a strong jet of water to knock the colony off the tips.
- What to do
- Potassium soap works on contact and only while it is wet, so it has to reach the underside of the leaf. On drought-loving plants and in heat it can scorch, so apply it in the evening.
- Signs
- The plant dies suddenly, often in mid season and without any decline beforehand. Peel the bark at ground level and under it there is a white or cream sheet of fungal tissue, thin as the skin of a mushroom. In the soil there are black or brown strands like bootlaces. In late summer and autumn tufts of honey brown mushrooms with a whitish ring on the stalk appear by the stumps or over dead roots.
- Prevention
- The fungus spreads through the soil with its strands, from a few centimetres to a good hand's width below the surface, and infects the roots of a living plant when it touches them. So do not leave stumps and dead roots in the ground. No plant is completely resistant, but privet, lilac, viburnum, weigela, forsythia, butterfly bush, rhododendron, thuja and walnut are particularly susceptible.
- What to do
- There are no products. The only thing that works is digging out and removing every infected root and stump, which takes away the food without which the strands in the soil do not grow. A vertical barrier of rubber or thick plastic sheet, buried about half a metre deep and standing a few centimetres above ground, stops the spread into an unaffected part of the garden.
- Signs
- A white, floury coating spreads over the leaves, first on the lower and older ones. The leaf under it yellows and dries up. The fruit stays small, because the plant loses leaf surface.
- Prevention
- Plant resistant varieties, leave an airy spacing and sun, and clear the debris at the end of the season. Unlike most fungi it is not helped by wet foliage, since it spreads in heat and high air humidity, in a dry summer too.
- What to do
- Oil products meant for powdery mildew on the squash family work on contact. They do not cure a leaf that is already affected, but they stop the spread to healthy ones. On herbs cut the affected shoots back instead, since the new growth comes clean. On ornamental perennials what is left is spacing and moisture.
- Signs
- The foliage on one branch takes on a silver sheen and the branch then dies. Cut across, the dead branch has an irregular dark stain in the middle that does not follow the rings. On old dead branches bracket fungi grow later, with a whitish woolly upper side and a purple brown underside. A silver sheen without the dark stain in the wood is not this disease but the result of drought or cold.
- Prevention
- The spores are active from September to May and enter through wounds, above all through pruning cuts. Remove dead wood before fruiting bodies grow on it.
- What to do
- Cut the affected branch off as soon as you can, well below the point where the dark stain in the wood ends. Disinfect the tools as you go and remove the cuttings at once, because fruiting bodies go on developing on branches left lying about. Do not paint the wounds as a matter of routine, but do it where the disease keeps coming back.
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Related plants
The plant below is in the same botanical family (Betulaceae).
Sources about the plant: Aktion Das sichere Haus (DSH), CliniTox Pflanzengifte, GBIF Backbone Taxonomy, NC State Extension Plant Toolbox, Oregon State University, Penn State Extension, Royal Horticultural Society, Utah State University Extension, Wikidata. Checked between 14 and 28 August 2026. The problem descriptions also draw on: Clemson Cooperative Extension, EPPO Global Database, KGZS, UF/IFAS Extension, University of Maryland Extension, University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension.