Growing Elderberries Naturally

I wanted to make this thread to help me keep track of and document growing my elderberries, with hopefully minimal work and maximum harvests!

They won't be irrigated, fertilized, or sprayed with anything, not even organic fertilizers or sprays, just naturally healthy soil, rain and sunshine!

They will be minimally pruned, if pruned at all. With minimal care, they can be truly enjoyed to the fullest! Bring on the yummy harvests!

Hopefully it can be helpful to others also!

If you'd like to stay up to date with the latest videos of what I'm growing and see monthly food forest tours, you can subscribe to my Youtube channel HERE by clicking the red subscribe button! I'd love to have you join me for this journey!

I took this picture last September, and this elderberry was almost two years old at the time. It really started to explode with growth in its second growing season, and I hope to get my first flowers and berries this upcoming season!

Beautiful!

I'll be watching your progress, as I've got some elderberry seeds in the fridge. I'm hoping to set some of them out when the weather warms up. I've never started them from seed before (only transplants), so if you have any experience with that, I'd be interested. Thanks!

Thanks Stacie!

I planted this elderberry as a 1 - 2 foot tall plant about 18 months before this photo was taken. A deer munched it a little the first year, but they didn't seem to bother it much the second year.

That's awesome that you're planting seeds, would love to see photos of how your elderberry seedlings turn out! I hope to get some seed from this one later this year and plant it soon too.

Thanks Richard!

Yes, these are Sambucus nigra. I took some hardwood cuttings about a month ago and am excited to see how they root.

Good luck with your cuttings if you plant some soon!

Elder (Sambucus nigrum) is one of the shrubs I was a little slow to plant here.  I did bring some cuttings from a good flowerer in the West Midlands.  However that has eventually done so well in a poor spot (very shallow acid soil, well drained and pretty exposed) I'm going to plant a load more.  Locally elder are not well regarded, they are supposed to bring bad luck if pruned, luckily I'm not superstitious!  Pruning brings the flowers down to picking height. You may find them getting a bit leggy if you don't cut them back every now and then Steve.
The one problem I have had is that despite flowering well I have hardly any berries set.  At the moment I'm assuming that I need a closer polinator (the nearest I'm aware of are several hundred metres/yards downwind)  I'm therefore trying to propagate some more local varieties, and I have a supposedly good one from Denmark too.  It maybe that the wind will still be a factor, but hopefully in a few years I'll get fruit as well as flowers as the shelter builds up as well.

Oh no, is that all Japanese Stilt grass?

This is what you get if you never prune an elder, it's not the most practical of shapes!

Joshua LeDuc wrote:Oh no, is that all Japanese Stilt grass?

I think there is some in the bottom right of the picture.

I have a large diversity of wild plants all growing together, and it hasn't been a problem, but rather has actually seemed to be very beneficial, by increasing the soil fertility, and wildlife and insect diversity as well. If something gets really out of hand, a few swipes of the swing blade or scythe, and something else takes its place.

Even the best frog patrol gotta have a break!

I cut and stuck these hardwood elderberry cuttings in mid January, and they started leafing out about two weeks ago.

I left two sets of buds below the soil (cut off), and have two sets above.

And this is how they looked today.

This may be interesting. I went back through to check an area that I hadn't had my phone with me the other day & some of my elderberries may have sprouted.

Weirdly, in one area that I had planted, I think, two elderberry seeds a few months back, there was a tiny little sprout just above the ground the the app identified as Indian Hemp. lol

Looking at your trees now, I guess I can see how the app might have confused the two, considering how small it was.

You definitely wont need any fertiliser, they grow like weeds here. I spend quite a bit of time weeding them out people's gardens and I still haven't been cursed by a witch for doing so just yet. They tend to get Auricularia auricula judae fungus on them after a while apparently that's edible and medicinal too, but it looks so unappealing I have never tried it!

Henry Jabel wrote:You definitely wont need any fertiliser, they grow like weeds here. I spend quite a bit of time weeding them out people's gardens and I still haven't been cursed by a witch for doing so just yet. They tend to get Auricularia auricula judae fungus on them after a while apparently that's edible and medicinal too, but it looks so unappealing I have never tried it!

They look lovely don't they, and the slimeyness after rain is wonderful too. Have you ever bought pre prepared stirfry mix? If so you have eaten them they are the brown strips in that. they're more for texture than taste but it's a great fungus to have it only appears on the old dead wood and can appear all year round.

Hey Steve, could you please describe the kind of sunlight your elderberries get in a day? I've got some new elderberry bushes I'm planting in a few days, and I'm curious if your elders are out in the blazing full sun all day, dappled light in partial shade, or something like morning sun afternoon shade etc.

Mine arrived today, too. So, like James, I'm working on the best place to plant them. I've an idea where I'd LIKE to put them - and it's pretty dappled, once the bigger trees fill out, in the summer.

James Freyr wrote:Hey Steve, could you please describe the kind of sunlight your elderberries get in a day? I've got some new elderberry bushes I'm planting in a few days, and I'm curious if your elders are out in the blazing full sun all day, dappled light in partial shade, or something like morning sun afternoon shade etc.

I'd estimate that these get about 8 hours of sun each day during the longer days of the year, and they are shaded almost fully in the morning and evening. They get full sun for the 8 hours that they do get sunlight.

Hope you get some good elderberries soon James!

Carla Burke wrote:Mine arrived today, too. So, like James, I'm working on the best place to plant them. I've an idea where I'd LIKE to put them - and it's pretty dappled, once the bigger trees fill out, in the summer.

I've found a lot growing wild by small creeks, doing ok in pretty heavy shade. They don't seem to be growing as fast, and I haven't seen them produce yet, but the ones that I've seen are still pretty small. Interested to hear if anyone has seen them produce in heavier shade.

Best of luck planting your new elderberries Carla!

Henry Jabel wrote:You definitely wont need any fertiliser, they grow like weeds here. I spend quite a bit of time weeding them out people's gardens and I still haven't been cursed by a witch for doing so just yet. They tend to get Auricularia auricula judae fungus on them after a while apparently that's edible and medicinal too, but it looks so unappealing I have never tried it!

A minor nitpick, but Auricularia auricula-judae is a European species! Around here you only ever run into Auricularia americana or Auricularia fuscosuccinea, depending on whether or not it's on hardwood or softwood. Pretty sure elder counts as hardwood so it'd be A. fuscosuccinea.

Not that it really matters, they all look the same unless you're using a microscope and they all have the exact same culinary applications.

Anyway, I've been doing the same thing this year. I had one bush in my yard and a handful of them that grow near where I work, and decided to grab me some trimmers and rooting powder.

A few of them I tried to root using honey (as I'd read it worked), and the rest I used a typical rooting powder from the local garden store.

My goal is to replace all that darn privet that was growing on my acre-lot with something actually useful and native...and Elder seemed like a good choice!

Henry Jabel wrote: They tend to get Auricularia auricula judae fungus on them after a while apparently that's edible and medicinal too, but it looks so unappealing I have never tried it!

I didn't realize you were talking about wood ear. Yes it taste good and I cultivate lots of them on oak stumps.

I have two elderberry bushes: black beauty and black lace, but consider them more ornamental. Last year I only had a few cluster of flowers each, 2 weeks apart so I didn't get any berry. Hopefully there will be more flowers for cross pollination this year.

Some of the elderberry cuttings were flowering, so I removed the flowers so they could focus on putting down some good roots and lots of healthy growth!

Tried to get some elderberry started a couple of years ago without apparent success. This spring planted three decently started bare root elders from a local permaculture nursery and they're doing pretty well. Last year's two from a large commercial nursery appear not to have survived the winter. Having planted three more this year, I then discovered two that I think are volunteers in another area. It's possible that the very first attempts I made actually had some success and that's where these two came from and I just hadn't noticed them before this spring.  Wherever they're from, I'm happy to have them :)

My elderberry is blooming for the first time this year and is filled with these beautiful flowers, and they smell really good too! It's like a vanilla anise smell, hard to describe.

Peter Ellis wrote:Tried to get some elderberry started a couple of years ago without apparent success. This spring planted three decently started bare root elders from a local permaculture nursery and they're doing pretty well. Last year's two from a large commercial nursery appear not to have survived the winter. Having planted three more this year, I then discovered two that I think are volunteers in another area. It's possible that the very first attempts I made actually had some success and that's where these two came from and I just hadn't noticed them before this spring.  Wherever they're from, I'm happy to have them

Good to hear Peter, hope they continue to do well!

There are a lot of flowers forming on the elderberry this year.

I stuck 3 (18"+roots) bare root elderberries in the ground, this spring. Two are doing great, the other...?  I'm wondering how many years, before I can reasonably expect blossoms, and for the blossoms to fruit?

I bet you could possibly get some next year if they grow a lot this year.

This is the third growing year for mine, and it is covered in blooms. It got munched to the ground its first year by some deer, so it is more like two years old instead of three.

If the rain lets up,  I'll get some pics. The first two look amazing, but the 3rd just looks like a stick, standing in a bit of dirt, lol.

Thanks everybody for your contributions to this thread. I only have 1 elderberry started now but definitely looking to add more!

I laugh when I recall how much I paid for a nursery grown elderberry for my cottage garden back in Australia. Here in the UK they self-seed like weeds, and coppice freely if cut back or pollarded.
The main issue I have with mine is aphids and blackfly. I think hubby is overfeeding the birds so their too lazy to go catch their own insects!