Hazelnuts

We spent the weekend preparing our next bed in the new vegetable garden.  This time the prepared bed was planted with three hazelnut bushes which we bought on Friday.

We visited a small nursery, not far from here and were delighted that they had bare rooted hazelnut bushes at a reasonable price.   We decided to buy three as we were advised to plant them about 2m (6'6") apart.

We also bought a dozen lettuce seedlings which looked superb and were so much further advanced than our own ones, grown from seed.  The lettuce seedlings were being sold in packs of 6 growing in the squares from the 1" size soil blocker.  In another part of the nursery there were hundreds and hundreds of these blocks with all manner of seedlings growing in them, with not a plastic pot in sight!!!

The new vegetable garden is on a slight slope and this bed is the farthest down the slope that we will be working this year and it was interesting to note how much better the soil was as we moved down the hill.  I say better, but please don't think that I mean good!!!  It was still a heavy clay in need of a lot of amendment....   just not quite as heavy as the top beds we had made already.

On Sunday we opened up three large holes and planted the three bushes in good compost.

Hazelnuts are the first nut trees we have planted here, but a neighbour tells me that he has a hedge of hazelnuts which is growing quite happily.   Of course, we do have three large walnut trees.