Blue elderberry management

I searched around but didn’t find much information on blue elderberry management. It’s a pretty large bush and I was hoping I could coppice it every winter and still have it fruit in the summer. Last year it put on like 15ft of growth. It’s a very strong plant. If it does that again it’ll be out of reach for me. Anyone have tips for keeping it contained?

I’m still wondering if I should cut 2 of the 4 stems and see what happens

What I would do is mentally divide it into two halves, and take turns each year cutting one half back severely (basically what you are doing). I would give it lots of compost to make up for the loss. With time you might be able to prune it to a more compact form. If you do any cutting in the summer, the green new growth can be rooted, I'm told, to make new plants (which are very, very in demand right now for selling and trade).

They can get to 30 feet in some cases.

If you're looking for a more manageable shrub black elderberry tops out quite a bit smaller

Interesting. I didn’t know they were in such demand. My daughter has been selling things with a little stand at the end of the driveway and people are buying a lot more than I would’ve expected 😅

I grow the black, Johns and Adams varieties in a crowded area.
I take them off at ground level every year then they grow up to 6 or 8 feet and produce a crop.
not sure about blue types but they sure take well to cutting back.

Well I took the plunge and cut 2 of the 4 stems almost to the ground. I then cut them up into sections and put ~60 cuttings in a nursery area. We’ll see which ones do well. I have a mix of pretty thick hardwood cuttings and flimsy growth from last year. I have no idea which ones will take so it’ll be fun to find out.

How did it turn out?!

Not well. None of them rooted. I’m not sure what happened, maybe blue elders just don’t like rooting from stem cuttings

Chris Holcombe wrote:Not well. None of them rooted. I’m not sure what happened, maybe blue elders just don’t like rooting from stem cuttings

I let a neighbor take several cuttings from a very old elderberry bush I asked her did they ever bloom or what happened to them and she said that they grew for a while but they never never once they planted them they never bloomed. Then what happened to my tree was some of it died it started to die and then I noticed one winter we had a very bad wind storm high winds of 60 MPH and somehow it got broken at the base from the wind and I saw some shoots come up but by accident my helpers that painted the barn like buzzed busted down and knowingly I felt like since I had to help to do the p*** I didn't want to rock the boat so I didn't say anything because it's very hard to find help these days I had to buy another plan and plan it somewhere else. I had some elderberries around my fence one of the pastures but after while they died they might have been 50 years old.

Chris,

Has coppicing helped to develop more lateral growth?
I have 4 blue elderberries that grew quickly, but do not produce much fruit if any in my lower garden (that did not produce much of anything at all due to lack of shade).
I decided to get rid of them, but felt bad and transplanted them to area with better microclimate. I have coppiced them hard to 50 cm height. They were difficult to dig because of taproot.