About Us

Foggy Bottom Tree Farm is proud to be partnering with Rutgers University and Professor, Thomas Molnar, to supply hazelnut trees for nut orchards in New Jersey, the surrounding states and Southern Ontario. The US hazelnut industry is centered in Oregon, but when those European hazelnut cultivars are planted in the East they are susceptible to a devastating disease called Eastern Filbert Blight. After many years of research, Dr. Molnar and his team in collaboration with Oregon State University have developed very productive cultivars of European hazelnut that combine disease resistance with excellent nut size and flavor. Foggy Bottom Tree Farm is honored to have a license from Rutgers to propagate and sell these four patented cultivars: 'Hunterdon', 'Monmouth', 'Raritan' and 'Somerset'. In addition, Dr. Molnar recommends the Hybrid Hazelnut Consortium cultivar known as The Beast™ as an important component in his orchard designs. This cultivar is disease resistant, cross pollinates with all four Rutgers cultivars and produces abundant quantities of smaller sized nuts. Dr. Molnar also recommends the hybrid cultivar Grand Traverse as a pollinizer. This hazelnut is tolerant of Eastern Filbert Blight and is an effective pollinizer of all the Rutgers cultivars and The Beast™. Due to lower yields and late nut drop it should not be relied upon as a primary nut producer. These cultivars, and others soon to follow in the Rutgers breeding program, are expected to be the foundation of a developing hazelnut industry in the Mid Atlantic and Great Lakes regions of the eastern US and southern Canada.