sutton023

Hello folks, here's a final fall plant availability update. We are now (still)  taking orders for the 2013 planting season . We've stopped  shipping plants for 2012  delivery, a bit earlier than in the previous couple of years, because: 1) We are sold out of tubelings in a good state for late planting; what we have on hand is either too actively growing to reliably go dormant in time, or too close to dormancy to put in enough roots. 2) In the recent few years, fall planting has been overall less successful than before, and some of our growers have had very serious mortality. Most of this appears to be a result of unusual weather extremes: early freezes, excessive winter moisture and freezing farther south have contributed to direct mortality. Extended growing seasons or early warmth has also been confusing the plants and adding to transplant and seasonal-clock-reset stress. Given these developments, we can no longer provide our survival guarantee this late in the sea...

An urgent note to all hazel growers- we're seeing increased nut theft this year, and it's accelerating. We're talking about rodents and birds, primarily.  In all years, there will be "theft"; but this year it seems to be exceptional to us.  The nuts are disappearing. In our experience, less experienced hazel growers tend to see hazel bushes with few nuts, and assume the bush simply never had many.  Often this is not the case- predators remove them; and very stealthily, so the gradual loss is not noticed. As a reminder; one of the papers I submitted for my Masters was an original piece of Ethology; a summer long field study of Black Tern social behavior- I basically minored in Animal Behavior, and am a trained observer. Which has turned out critically important on several occasions; in one, it took us weeks to discover that bluejays had deciphered our plant marking process- and were using it to harvest the best nuts, and best plants, before we actually got to them....

If you're on our catalog email list, you should already have seen this little note from orders@badgersett.com. If you want us to add you to the list, just send an email to that address! And, so you don't have to go looking any further, here is a link to the YouTube full preview of the 2011 Short Course introductory talk. Hello Folks, For the first time in six years, we've updated our plant catalog! And in addition, we once again offer other products for order on the web. This includes the 2011 SHORT COURSE DVD-ROM, which I know many of you have been waiting for. This crazy weather may be too hot and dry for some of you to plant, but now is a great time to get your order in for 2013 so you can be close to the front of the shipping queue come next May. If you're in a place where it is less extreme, or you have no problem getting enough water on, we do have quite a few plants available– the availability notices on the catalog pages are now current. Scroll down for a little...

A few more points on keeping newly planted tubelings alive in extreme conditions. Our regular planting instructions strive to be complete; but the reality is, the current record-breaking heat and drought are outside anything you could call "normal".  We do have some additional experience that can help you in this situation. A.  Water deeply.  If you are only able to supply enough water to get the ground wet down 2-3"; you might be better off not watering at all.  Because: hazels normally grow roots very near, or even "in" the ground surface.  Particularly when newly planted, they have limited resources to work with; if you are only watering shallowly, they will be encouraged to grow mostly shallow roots- following where the water is.  They may not have energy enough to also grow deep roots.  So- when it gets dry again- they will be stressed, again. Try to deliver enough water so that the ground becomes wet at least 6" deep; 8" is better.  This wil...