Your KITCHEN GARDEN

HAZELNUTS

Hazel wood is the main source of bean and pea sticks, and all the fencing at Longmeadow is woven from coppiced hazel. But at this time of year the hazels exist for their nuts.

Growing nuts for deliberate harvest is rare in modern gardens, but until the Second World War a ‘nuttery’ was a feature of many large gardens, and I have seen miles of hazel plantations in Italy, north of Rome, where the nuts are harvested for their oil. The biggest nuts are produced on old wood, so the hazels are pruned to get the right amount of light and air to them, fixing them in a perpetual maturity where coppiced wood is always reinventing itself.

The wild hazel you find in woodland is Corylus avellana, or the cob. It carries its nuts in clusters of two to four, the squat nut sleeved by a short husk. To get the best nuts, hazel, rather like fig, needs to grow on poor, stony soil. If the ground is too rich and damp, the goodness will go into the wood rather than the fruit.

Hazelnuts will store until Christmas if kept in their husk, which stops them from drying out too fast. If collected while green, leave them in a dry place and they will ripen by November.