For the Squirrel in All of Us

Having a fine old nut tree in your yard is like signing up for a yearly shower of protein from heaven, but most are very large, and with a new one it may be many years before you can rake up enough nuts to top a sundae.

Eager to include nuts in my own edible landscape, I decided to give hazelnuts a try. They're the perfect choice for an impatient gardener with limited space. Also known as filberts (most likely after Saint Philbert, whose feast is celebrated at the time of the late August nut drop), these tasty nuts can hold their own in any fancy nut mix, and they grow on plants that are more shrub than tree. Two springs ago I set out three good-size plants from a nursery, and last fall I was thrilled to reap a bowlful of little nuts, tasty and fairly easy to crack.

Mine are the native American hazelnut, Corylus americana, which grows wild in most parts of the country and would be worth planting even if it added nothing to the menu. The toothed leaves resemble those of a birch, to which the hazelnut is related, and some turn red or yellow in fall. Yellow-beige catkins (the male flowers) dangle from them in early spring. The nuts provide abundant food for wildlife, including large birds such as grouse and mammals such as -- here's the tricky part -- squirrels, which may squirrel away your harvest before you do. I found that if I removed the nuts daily, as soon as they began to loosen from the clustered capsules in which they grow, I could come out with my fair share.

My friend Lee Reich, who is featured in the accompanying column on edible landscaping, gave me another tip: He noticed that squirrels don't like to run through tall grass and that leaving his hazelnut grove unmowed deterred them. He also urged me to try some of the newer cultivars, developed by crossing the native hazelnut with the European species, Corylus avellana. The latter's nuts are the larger size we are more accustomed to eating (less tedious to shell) but are prone to a fungus blight. Most hybrids between the two have better blight resistance and bear good-tasting nuts of decent size.

Two popular varieties are Lewis and Clark, named for the explorers who encountered the nuts on their western travels. Other recommended ones include Graham, Santiam, Delta, Gamma, Yamhill and Halle's Giant. Check out the selection at your local nursery or order from sources that make them a specialty, such as Burnt Ridge Nursery & Orchards (http://www.burntridgenursery.com).

With all hazelnuts, male and female flowers are borne on the same tree, and for pollination you need to plant at least two trees that bloom at the same time. Pairing them up can sound like a matchmaking game at a fraternity-sorority mixer ("Gamma pollinates Delta, Yamhill, Barcelona . . ."), but if in doubt, just buy lots of different ones and turn them loose. I'm picturing a "hazel wood" like the one in W.B. Yeats's poem "The Song of Wandering Aengus." Or a long mixed hedgerow with enough nuts and berries for everybody, squirrels included.