(todo photo of sign)
About the year 2010 the fungal bark disease called filbert blight became pervasive in the Pacific Northwest and forced all the major varieties grown for a century to be replaced by new blight immune cultivars bred at Oregon State University. The blight appears as a series of black dots on the branches which soon kills the tree. There are now several great new blight immune cultivars. Each variety needs a specific complimentary pollinizer variety. The pollinizers now also produce a good nut crop.
Both squirrels and jays are experts in harvesting the nuts just as they get ripe. If this is a problem for you, iIt is possible to net the trees or to harvest the almost ripe nuts as soon as the husks start to turn yellow and the nuts turn in the husk, when twisted. Most of the pruning is to keep the shrub open by removing overlapping branches.
