In reply to A newbie all over again! by Annec
In reply to A newbie all over again! by Annec
I'm not an expert, but generally trees in Italy seem to be a lot cheaper than in England. A large supermarket near us (Italy) sells all kinds of fruit trees (March, April time) and a 6' or 7' hazelnut tree would be about 9 or 10 euros.
How does that compare with the UK?
In reply to A newbie all over again! by Annec
Hazel is an excellent tree to grow for firewood!The tree grows quickly and burns very well and you can coppice it !
If you have room grow as many as possible.They are not very long lived and once theyve ceased to fruit well you can cut them down to the base (copice) and they'll regrow.
In reply to A newbie all over again! by Annec
[quote=Britaly;91159]I'm not an expert, but generally trees in Italy seem to be a lot cheaper than in England. A large supermarket near us (Italy) sells all kinds of fruit trees (March, April time) and a 6' or 7' hazelnut tree would be about 9 or 10 euros.
How does that compare with the UK?[/quote]
It's cheap, but I've noticed two things about fruit trees sold in Italian supermarkets:
First, they tend to look rather sorry for themselves since it's not a good idea to put dormant trees in a nice warm supermarket. Even though it's January, they decide it's spring and start putting out leaves. People qualified to stock shelves are not necessarily much good at horticulture.
Second, the varieties on offer are very limited. If you're looking for an apple tree, for example, you'll probably see Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, Fuji and Gala. Which is fine... if you're looking for those varieties.
I've no doubts that there are Italian garden centres which offer a good variety of fruit trees, but I've not yet found one and we've visited a lot of garden centres in our travels around Abruzzo.
That's why I ended up ordering a lot of trees from UK nurseries last year. There's more information about what we did in [URL="http://www.italymag.co.uk/forums/general-chat-about-italy/8544-stick-not-required.html"]this thread[/URL]. All the trees survived the trip from Britain and the winter. Most got hammered by local creepy-crawlies once they put out leaves and look a bit sorry for themselves at the moment, but they're all holding on. One thing all the rain we've had this year means is that we haven't been carting around watering cans to all the new trees with poor root systems, so we seem to have been fortunate in our timing in that sense.
Al
In reply to A newbie all over again! by Annec
Local garden plant suppliers supply good fruit and nut trees and the best time to buy is autumn or early spring It seems that a hazel nut is just that here and the local trees are all coppiced. I have just bought some neglected land and three enormous hazel trees have had to be cut back to the ground so I will have to be patient. After a couple of years do I take out one third of the branches annually or what? Help appreciated.
In reply to A newbie all over again! by Annec
Piedmont is the home of hazelnuts (think notella and farrero roche along with chocolate bar makers like novi) - if you want to come and dig up a few saplings here feel free (they spread like wildfire) - we crop about 50 as they were here when we came, taste great! We had a lot more, just take a lot out for fire breaks and to get air around the vineyards....
They do grow here in Marche, I have 2 large shrubs down in the field which are producing nuts now.Cannot help on sourcing them though, someone else around here might be more helpul on that, we were very lucky that all of our fruit trees and olives were well established when we bought our home, one of the reasons we chose it. Though I have to say the apricots whilst prolific this year all seem to be covered with some sort of skin blight, can you help on that one!
A