Woodkerne Nurseries provide you with the basic theory and skills of fruit tree grafting to help you propagate new apple trees from your old orchard trees or from any eating and cooking variety of your choice. Also learn to create a ‘family’ tree by grafting many varieties on to one established tree. We include a tour of the orchards on our organic woodland farm. With Paul McCormick & Jacinta French at Woodkerne Nurseries, Gortnamucklagh Woodland Farm, Skibbereen, Co. Cork.

10.30am-4.30pm. Cost: €40, Low income concession €25. Advance booking necessary.

Tel: 028-23384: Email: woodkernenurseries@gmail.com

Sunday 14th February 2010

Details:

PRUNING FRUIT TREES and Orchard Design & Management
Saturday 13th February 2010

This practical course will focus on winter pruning of young trees to increase fruiting production and pruning to rejuvenate old fruit trees. Also learn about siting and designing an orchard, choosing varieties, planting trees, and year-round maintenance. We include a tour of the orchards on our organic woodland farm. With Paul McCormick & Jacinta French at Woodkerne Nurseries, Gortnamucklagh Woodland Farm, Skibbereen, Co. Cork.

10.30am – 4.30pm. Cost: €40, Low income €25. Advance booking necessary.

Tel: 028-23384; Email: woodkernenurseries@gmail.com; www.woodkerne.net

The Hazel tree (Corylus avellana) and its cultivated relative, the Cobnut, is possibly the most neglected of our food producing plants in Ireland. Hazel is more often viewed as a ‘wildlife tree’, a hedging plant or a source of small poles for the garden. Whilst it is all of these things, Hazel is much more – it provides an annual supply of protein-rich food in the hazelnut.

Its Halloween again and the nuts are in the shops. Ever wondered where they all come from. The Hazel nut …hazel nuts are produced across Ireland every year, and many of our population are oblivious to this resource. The Burren for example is being taken over by hazel bushes as agricultural grazing declines.

The hazel is a multi-stemmed shrub growing to 10 metres and sometimes more. There are two main species that are grown and these and their hybrids form the many varieties of cobnut, e.g. Ennis Our native species is Corylus Avellana which grows throughout Europe into West Asia and North Africa. The other species is Corylus Mazima which is native to the Balkans and Asia Minor. Varieties have been developed in France, Italy, UK, Turkey, and the USA etc. Large crops of hazel nuts are harvested in these countries for domestic consumption and export.

Ireland was colonised by Hazel soon after the ice retreated. In earlier times it was used on a large scale as an important source of food and shelter materials. The Hazel was greatly appreciated and revered in ancient Ireland. It’s importance to the Celts is reflected in the mythology – Hazel being regarded as the tree of knowledge and one of the three magical fruiting trees, along with the apple and the oak, which together supplied all primary nutritional requirements.

The greatest incentive for planting Hazel today is the nutritional value and health benefits of the crop itself. Hazel has the potential to play a vital role along with other tree crops (other nuts and fruit), in a more sustainable form of food production.

Advantages of tree food crops over annual crops

All tree crops, Hazel included, build soil whereas most of our annual crops, such as wheat, silage, etc. deplete the soil. The cultivation of most of our annual grain and legume crops involve creating bare soil. In ecological terms bare ground is a disaster in nature and the planted crops then attempt to repair the damage, this being their original ecological role. This process is repeated year after year. Whether by ploughing or spraying poison (herbicide) nutrients are leached and soil eroded. the natural progress of ecological evolution is stunted and the land is prevented from reaching its full potential. In contrast trees are much further along this ecological process, and forest are highest evolved habitat which build soil and absorb carbon year after year, thus increasing natural capital as well as biodiversity.

The advantages of growing staple crops from trees and shrubs over annual plants include:

1. No tillage required, therefore less soil erosion, less leaching of nutrients and less energy inputs

2. The build-up of soil through leaf litter and the capture of carbon in soil and the plant itself

3. Increased leaf area meaning greater capture of solar energy allowing the plant to

4. Better resistance drought and flood.

Nutritional value of hazelnuts and health benefits

Nutritionally Hazelnuts/cobnuts are 65%-70% oil /fat most of which is mono-unsaturated, 15% carbohydrate and 15-20%protein with good amounts of calcium, phosphorus and potassium. It has been suggested that they are a suitable raw material to replace soybeans and soya products, especially as they do not have the drawback of phytoestrogen content which has led to recent concerns regarding the safety of soya products. Recent research has shown that Cobnuts contain only small amounts of Omega 3 fatty acids but their proven health benefits derive from vitamins, etc. (see reference).

Interestingly American researchers have discovered small amounts of tazanes in hazel foliage and bark. Taxanes are the raw material for the new anti-cancer drug, Taxol currently derived from the Pacific Yew tree. It is suggested that these compounds may also be present in the fruit of the Hazel. Research in this area is ongoing.

Pests and Diseases

Hazels and Cobs are hardy trees that are rarely seriously troubled by disease. The main pest in certain parts of the country is the introduced Grey Squirrel species which takes the nuts before they are ripe. The best control is to trap and dispose of them. It is illegal to release squirrels into the countryside. However squirrel is a very sustainable and reportedly tasty source of protein.

Growing conditions for Hazel

Hazels/Cobnuts are very easy to grow, thriving in all but the most difficult of conditions. However, like most tree crops, better conditions result in better crops. It is a common mistake to plant trees on the poorest site, and then condemn the trees for not doing well. Poorer land for timber with occasional cropping and treat your main tree crops to better land.

The ideal site for a cob tree is a sunny, sheltered spot but partial shade is tolerates and may be necessary in an exposed site. In fact Cobs grow well and fruit reasonably well on the North side of a windbreak. Most soils are suitable, alkaline soils are the optimum but clays and acid loams are tolerated. Hazels do not thrive on unimproved acid peatland. We have also noticed that they do not thrive riparian zones.

Hazels are monoecious, meaning that they carry both male and female flowers. However because flowering times seldom coincide on individual plants they may be regarded as self-sterile.

Pollination is by the wind and two or more different varieties are required for fruit. A hedge of nearby native hazel will usually pollinate your cobnut trees. The female flowers are tiny red tassels on the tips of the buds, the male flowers are the familiar ‘lambs tails’ of early spring. Flowering occurs from January to March and poor weather at this time may affect the crop. It seems a short period of dry weather allows adequate pollination.

Productivity

Yields are variable from year to year and individual trees can yield from 3-6kg of nuts, sometimes up to 10 kg. Mature orchards in Kent, UK yield 400-800kg/acre using older, less fruitful varieties so potentially higher yields are possible.

Plants are usually spaced about 5 metres apart but can be planted closer t together in a hedge row. Pruning has traditionally been intensive consisting of forming a bowl-shaped bush on a single stem whilst cutting back side shoots in the winter and breaking as hard long side shoots in August.

Some growers advocate letting trees grow in a more natural form on multiple stems thus requiring less labour input. Yields between the methods are comparable as the main limiting factor to crops seems to be soil conditions. Thus feed the soil and let the leaf litter, which is high in nitrogen and phosphorus, recycle the nutrients.

Harvesting and Storage

COBNUT VARIETIES

All cobnut varieties are clonally reproduced as they do not come true from seed. These improved varieties usually produce well, sometimes exceptionally, and are an option for cheap, large scale plantings. There are hundreds of varieties. The listing below includes only the varieties we are currently growing at Woodkerne Nurseries in Skibbereen, Co. Cork in the South west of Ireland.

Butler: A vigorous tree producing good crops of large nuts and plenty of male flowers

Corable: Another vigorous tree giving regular yields of large nuts in mid-late season.

Cosford: Old variety with medium size nuts of very good flavour, cropping well.

EMOA 1: New variety that has not cropped yet, nuts are reportedly very large, and very productive.

Ennis: A variety from the United States giving good crops of very large nuts.

Gunslebert: Smaller tree producing regular crops of medium sized, well flavoured nuts

Halls Giant: Large nuts, plentiful male flowers and fairly vigorous tree, tree, heaviest cropper in some UK trials.

Kentish Cob: Traditional UK variety, fair yields of medium sized tasty nuts.

Longue de’Espagne: Similar to Kentish Cob with slightly longer shaped nuts, produces when very young.

Pearsons Prolific: Heavy, regular cropper of medium -sized nuts of good flavour, vigorous tree.

Growing fruit and nut trees for food crops

Imagine a forest, canopy trees interspersed with lower growing shrubs. It looks like any other, yet this forest grows not only timber, it grows food. This could be part of the future landscape of Ireland. In these times when more of us are facing up to the reality of climate change and seeking solutions to life after peak oil, the role of trees and their crops in providing for our diet in a post fossil fuel society has yet to be recognised.

Tree crops are good for our health and good for the health of the Earth. Fruit and nuts contain proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals and sugars – in fact, most of the necessary components of a balanced diet. Together with meat and/or fish, fruit and nuts form the basis of the ‘hunter-gatherer’ diet to which the human body has evolved.  It is now thought we may be less well adapted to the grain/flour based diet -a diet that stems from a 10,000 year experiment with grain agriculture.

Modern intensive agricultural practices are oil dependant and produce greenhouse gases through fertiliser use, oxidation of soil carbon during ploughing, habitat destruction etc. Food forests as a agricultural land-use have multiple advantages over annual agricultural crops. A perennial food supply, that sequesters carbon and requires less labour and energy inputs can help to reduce the negative impact of both climate change and oil depletion. The role of trees in sequestering carbon is often underestimated because the carbon sink in forest soils is overlooked. Consider soil build-up by trees, (via leaf mould and fallen branches), the root masses, and the fungal hyphoid web, all of which are carbon-based and can be stable for centuries. This carbon sink is relatively permanent in contrast to industrial forest plantations which the forestry industry claims sequester carbon but which is in fact release most of their carbon during clear felling.

For the past ten years we have been producing and growing a range of fruit and nut tree species at our tree nursery and woodland farm on the banks of the River Ilen in West Cork. We are engaged in a long term, small scale research project trialling a variety of species, and collating information to determine what fruit and nut tree species are productive in our conditions -a mild climate with a mixture of soil types and aspect. We believe the results are applicable to much of the country and further afield.

The main species we are trialling are;

Fruits – Apples, Pears, Plums, Hawthorns

Nuts-   Hazel /Cobnut, Sweet Chestnut, Walnut Species, Pine nut , Monkey Puzzle

APPLES

Apples prefer a fertile, well drained soil but will grow under most conditions. When grown in poorer soil apples can fail to thrive. The method we use to compensate for poor soils is to grow trees on their own roots by planting the tree deeper than usual so that the graft is buried thus allowing scion roots to form. This contrasts to the general practice and gardening advice of leaving the graft above the soil. (Apples shoots are joined to a rootstock by a process called grafting to propagate a particular variety). This method can produce trees that are larger than usual but given poor soils and difficult growing conditions extra tree vigour is not usually a problem. Vigour is easy to control for most varieties by tying down new shoots to the horizontal and by summer pruning.

The main diseases of apples are canker and scab, which can be controlled by selecting less susceptible varieties and cutting out the diseased branches.

The only significant problem we have encountered with apple growing is the loss of flower buds to bullfinches resulting in limited cropping some years. The most successful solution we have found is to hang old CDs in the branches before and during the flowering period to deter our feathered friends, remembering to remove after fruit set to avoid familiarisation.

Most apple varieties are not self-fertile and require pollination by a different variety of the same flowering group or one group either side, i.e.

an ‘Early’ flowering apple can be pollinated by an Early or Mid-season, a Mid flowering by early, Mid or Late, and a Late flowering by Mid or Late.

Most successful apple varieties

Allen’s Everlasting: Latest keeping eater, ripening off the tree, some canker

Annie Elizabeth: Latest keeping cooker

Ardcairn Russet: A sweet apple

Chiloe Apple/ Fillingham pippin: A South American variety, a small tree with sweet apples, and very hardy

Cornish Aromatic: A late eater, sweet and sharp

Golden delicious: Surprisingly this commercial variety grows well, ripening well off the tree late in the season

Grenadier: An early cooker, juicy, no disease noted

Irish Peach: Early eater, some scab, still worth growing

Irish Russet/ Sam Young: Our favourite, a small, flavoursome apple, no diseases

Katy: Early eater, probably the most disease-resistant variety

Apple varieties difficult to grow

Egremont Russet: Very susceptible to canker.

Cox’s Orange  Pippin: Shy to crop in our climate, suffers from scab and canker.

James Grieve: Susceptible to canker

PEAR and PLUM

It is early days for our plum and pear selections. So far it seems that shelter to the North is a priority to improve the micro-climate. In poor Spring weather attracting bees to the flowers, which blossom earlier in Spring than apples, seems to be the primary limitation to cropping.

Our selections of pear and plum varieties are based on reviews of the available literature e.g. Pomona, Agroforestry News and communication with growers.

HAWTHORN SPECIES

We have had success with exotic edible hawthorn species. The haws of all hawthorns are edible but some are not very palatable. The most successful species for us so far have been Crataegus mollis and Crataegus schraderiana, both of which have large, tasty fruits and produce abundantly. Good specimens of many species can be seen at the John F. Kennedy arboretum, New Ross, Co. Wexford. Reports indicate that lots of hawthorn species have similar potential.

Hawthorns are tough trees withstanding wind and poor soils, but of course cropping is better in more favourable conditions.

NUTS

The fact that nut producing trees grow, thrive and crop in Ireland comes as a surprise to many people. To date we have collected crops of Cobnuts (large hazelnuts), Sweet Chestnuts, Common Walnuts, American Black Walnuts, Japanese Walnuts, and Monkey Puzzle nuts in County Cork, and Pine nuts in County Wexford.

Most of these are cropping by pure chance having being planted for reasons other than food production.This shows the potential for production if locally-proven varieties are selected.

It is important when growing nut trees to be aware of the difference between seedlings and varieties of trees propagated clonally. Cloned trees are produced by either grafting, layering or stooling techniques and are genetically identical to the mother tree. This means that their characteristics and production potential are more predictable. Because they are more difficult to propagate than seedlings they are more expensive to buy. Seedlings are trees grown from nuts and are more variable in size, vigour, cropping, etc. and results can depend on the provenance of the seed used (Provenance refers to the source of seed which can effect the characteristics of the tree e.g. Sweet chestnut seed from Brittany has a greater chance of success than seed from Corsica or Italy as the climate of Brittany is more similar to our climate than that of southern Europe.) Carefully selected seedlings have the potential to crop well however it is generally more advisable to seedlings for larger scale plantings where poor performers can be thinned out.

COBNUTS

Cobnuts are a cultivated form of hazel. They are medium-sized, short stemmed shrubs which grow up to 25ft in height. Cobnuts prefer some shelter and a neutral soil but can grow in almost all conditions other than peat bog.

Cropping begins within 4-5 years and production increases rapidly.

They are not self-fertile and require two trees or wild hazels nearby. We have  plenty of wild hazel around so pollination is not a problem for us.

Our trials to date show all 12 Cobnut varieties are producing nuts. The most productive varieties are Webbs Prize, Pearsons Prolific and Longue d’Espagne, whilst the largest nuts come from a variety called Ennis.        Cobnuts contain approximately 14% protein, 12% carbohydrate and 60% fat, and are also a good source of calcium and iron.

SWEET CHESTNUTS

Sweet Chestnut varieties have also been successful for us. The 10 varieties we have selected are mainly from France and have adapted well to our climate. Fruiting began at 7 years and three are now cropping well, namely Bouche de Betizac, Bournette and Marron de Lyon. We have recorded growth rates of up to 5 foot per year and in some instances flowering has occurred the year after grafting.

We also have seedlings grown from sweet chestnuts collected from local trees and some from hybrids grown in Western USA. All are thriving. Trees growing locally are of unknown provenance and do well but few crop well and the nuts are usually very small.

The Sweet Chestnut is a large tree, growing up to 100ft. It requires a well-drained, acid soil and cannot tolerate water logging. They are reasonably wind resistant but cropping is reduced by too much exposure. Pollination is mainly by wind but insects love the flowers and can help in pollination. A minimum of two trees is required because they are not self-fertile. The best pollinating varieties are Belle Epine, Marigoule and Verdale. The nuts of the Sweet Chestnut are high in carbohydrate (42%) suitable for flour, with 6% protein and 6% fat.

WALNUTS

COMMON WALNUT

There are at least four species of walnut suitable for our climate. The most well-known is the Common Walnut Juglans regia. Our trials of various Common Walnut varieties are still in the early stages but we have already gathered some interesting information. Some varieties have been eliminated from our trials because of disease problems whilst the remainder have all produced only female flowers. Research has shown that the application of farmyard manure (FYM) or other nutrients can help male flowering and growth rates so we intend to try this in 2007.

We have located young Common Walnut trees cropping locally and our aim is to propagate from these trees by grafting and from seed.

Common Walnut prefers a neutral soil of good fertility but will grow well in most soils if fertility is enhanced. They can grow to 100 feet in height and are reasonably wind hardy. Frost damage can damage new growth and flowers so avoid frost pockets when planting.

BLACK WALNUT

The Black Walnut Juglans nigra is a magnificent tree from North America, growing to 120ft and highly valued for its timber. We have only started growing this species but have identified a mature specimen in a public park in Cork city that produced a crop of its strong, oil rich, tasty nuts in 2006. The ‘heat island’ effect of the city may have contributed to successful fruiting but the species is still worthwhile planting given predictions for temperature increases due to climate change.

BUTTERNUT

Another American species is the Butternut Juglans cinerea, which has grown well for us during the past five years. It shows good potential, especially as it seems to cope with wetter soils better than the other walnut species.

HEARTNUT

We believe the most promising walnut species is the Heartnut Juglans ailantifolia ‘cordiformis’, a ‘seed sport’ of the Japanese Walnut Juglans ailantifolia. We have recorded exceptional growth rates and the species has cropped at 7 years old in South West England – a similar climate to ours. We have a trial plot of 30 Heartnut seedlings which we will thin out to the most productive in the next few years.

The Heartnut is renowned for cropping  early  and produces the most beautiful heart-shaped seed. It also has the most spectacular foliage of any walnut. We have  gathered Japanese Walnuts on Fota Island in Cork, therefore we are confident our trees will crop well.

All walnuts are high in protein, 15% -25% and fat 55% -65% (again high in Omega 3). Carbohydrate content is low at 9% -14%.

PINE NUTS

Pine nuts are definitely worth planting if you have the time and space. The Stone Pine Pinus pinea should grow well in a coastal location as it seems to withstand some salt and sandy soils.

Two other pines worth growing, if you can obtain them, are the Korean pine Pinus koraiensis and the Siberian Pine Pinus sibirica. The latter tree seems very adaptable and grows on peat bogs in its native habitat. All three species produce the  familiar Pine nuts containing 53%- 68% fat (again high in Omega 3) and 14%- 35% protein.  All pines are self-fertile.

Another “pine” tree that definitely grows well here is the Monkey Puzzle tree otherwise known as Chile Pine Araucaria araucana. It is not actually a true pine but comes from a much more ancient lineage, being familiar to the dinosaurs. The huge pineapple shaped cones break up on the tree releasing the large oily almond shaped seeds. Individual trees are either male or female and the only way to determine the sex of a Monkey Puzzle tree is to wait until it flowers and this takes 30-40years. However when both male and female trees are together the trees pollinate well and fruit profusely.

There are many other tree and shrub species we aim to trial in the near future -Hickories, Pecans, Edible Oaks, Persimmons, Mulberries, Asian Pear and others. There is untapped potential worth utilising in all these species

If you have land, think about growing some fruit and nut trees. If not, talk to someone who has, be it a friendly farmer, or your local council, who should be lobbied to plant food-producing trees in parks, residential areas, hedgerows and roadside plantings.

We need to establish breeding programs now throughout the country to identify fruit and nut trees suitable for a secure local food supply into the future, Ireland has the best tree growing climate in Western Europe and we should take advantage of this to grow forests of food, fuel, and timber,-the truly multifunctional forest.