Hazelnut trees problem

One_Of_Shanks

Hi,

Our hazelnut trees (4 of them) were planted well over a year ago and growing great up until the last fortnight.

Suddenly leaves are turning yellow and eventually brown and dropping off.

What could be the issue here?

Any help appreciated - Thanks

looksee

Do you mean just a few leaves at a time? That would probably be the season - autumn is showing leaf colour a bit early this year. If a lot of them are shriveling and turning brown on the bush then that might be a bit more suspect.

One_Of_Shanks

Thanks for the reply!

About 50% of the leaves have turned yellow. And a good few have then turned brown and dropped off, one tree in particular has lost about a quarter of its leaves now. I was initially thinking Autumn too but none of our other fruit trees have shown any change in leaf colour yet so I'm just a bit concerned.

I was told in garden centre when buying them that hazelnuts don't like a rich soil so I had not been feeding them with anything. Should I have been? I use a tomato food for all our other fruit trees.

looksee

I doubt that feeding them would have any effect on them. It really sounds like autumnal leaf drop, but without seeing the bushes its hard to say. You really can't go by what other different varieties of trees are doing, they tend to drop leaves at different rates.

One_Of_Shanks

Thanks looksee, hopefully just autumnal leaf drop so. Cheers for your help, much appreciated

Hocus Focus

I'm not aware of any Hazel trees in my vicinity, but I picked ripe hazel nuts off a tree in Cornwall in the first week of July, which indicates that their flowering-fruiting-leafdrop cycle might be earlier in general, or perhaps just this year, than most other trees.

Delphinium

It has been a very dry season so they are probably shedding leaves a little early. Keep watered especially from next spring. A tough tree so they should bounce back unless diseased or suffered root damage.