Noisettes

I love hazelnuts. So I was quite pleased when friends Susan and Simon brought us a bag of them from their trees in Preuilly-sur-Claise last month. They're easily shelled with a proper nut cracker, and then, once roasted lightly in the oven, are ready for all manner of recipes. They're also good just to much on.

Freshly shelled hazelnuts from Susan's and Simon's trees.

If you've been a long-time reader of this blog, you might remember that there are about twelve hazelnut trees in our own back yard. Our problem with them is that we have little weevils that bore into the young nuts to lay their eggs. The hatching larvae then consume the nut before it can grow. We get beautiful, but hollow, hazelnuts in late summer.

And the few nuts that the weevils miss are taken by our local red squirrels. I've done a little research into dealing with the weevils, but I don't want to spray the trees with insecticides. One solution is to encircle the trunks with sticky tape to prevent the females (who spend winter in the ground at the base of the trees) from climbing up to bore into the fruit in spring. Most of our trees have multiple trunks, so this is not a very practical, much less economical, solution.

Consequently, I've done nothing to deal with the problem and we don't have many edible hazelnuts as a result. Susan and Simon just bought their property with the nut trees on it last year. I don't think they've done anything in particular to them, or if the previous owner did. But they seem to have had a good crop.