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I am trying to get more useful crops from my hazles. Can anyone give me some ideas on management eg pruning, feeding. Have looked on the net but all I can find is people enthusing about cultivating Hazle with no clue as to how to do it!

You pretty much do nothing to hazels both cobs and filberts, other than keep the squirrels at bay.
Although one thing that improves the size of the crop is to trim away any suckers to leave just one trunk, but that is hard work as they just keep growing.
That and pray for reasonable weather in early spring when they flower.

supplement with boron to improve set. also make sure there are sufficient varieties flowering at any time to get pollination.

I can never understand hazels as if you cut them they grow straight canes, yet if you don't they grow wiggly and like 'normal' tree branches. I have to semi coppice them as they grow very tall and spindly so I've always got a mix of very strange looking branches and they are all multi trunked anyway. If I ever get any nuts it's a bonus but rare - I guess it might help buying a proper variety rather than just inheriting tatty old shrubs that came with the property!

I just finished planting my hazel hedge so look forward to any spare information anyone has. By the way what is coppicing?

Jessiebean wrote:By the way what is coppicing?

Coppicing is cutting trees or shrubs off just above ground level in winter, which will then sprout multiple trunks the following spring.
You can only do it with certain trees, hazel, willow, chestnut, sycamore and ash to name a few.
Very useful for firewood production or just for poles as you can harvest the wood and not have to replant.