They grow fairly well here in wet soil.

OK,,Elerberries full bore here now.Wife just made three Elderberry Cream Cheese Pies,,and I just made a gallon of Elderberry Syrup and got two quarts of Elderberry Tincture going that will be done in 8 weeks.

Is that what they make Sambuca out of?

Sambuca has anise in it always, but sometimes has elderberry in it. Both anise and elderberry were thought to have magical properties in Italy and most of Europe. Traditionally, Port often had elderberry added to it too.

Keith

Sambucus is the genus name for elderberries.

Yeah you are not really doing good things for genetics but I understand. The thing about elderberries is that every berry and every bunch will produce genetically different plants. So for elderberry if you see a cluster that is loaded down and all of the berries ripen at the same time, you may want to clone that one.
I actually stay away from any cultivated varities, they have been bred so much I like different. We have been gathering here for the past 2 weeks, but I will start 5-10 from seed and see what we get. Coral bean, PawPaw, Persimmon, Beautyberry, Farkleberry, Fox Grape, Muscadine, Scuppernong, Blueberry, Red Mulberry and a bunch of others what I got going on right now. For elderberries if anybody wants to eat them, you just test it because everybody is different. Most down here will only eat them after they are cooked, but as Beaverpeeler pointed out they are great. Nice project, glad to see.

Elderberrys make real good wine.

Wife has made EB jam for years and I have eaten it for years, Maybe thats whats wrong with me.

good read thanks guys

Vert interestung beaverpeeler but Heck i got all kinds a sprouts round here i xan send ya.

I make lderberry jelly. Its my daughtets favorite helly.

I dug these up

Excellent, that's a big patch you got growing.

I just found a couple small patches today when I was out scouting. Lots of real dark purple fruit.

How would one go about planting seeds from these trees, plant the whole berry or remove and dry the seeds?

Elderberry seeds are supposed to take a long time to stratify. I have found if you just bury the ripe berries under a little light soil and leave them alone over Winter, many will grow.

Cuttings are a much quicker way to propagate elderberries. Elderberry cuttings taken and planted in the Spring have a pretty close to 100% rooting success, even if not given a lot of attention.

I had 2 cuttings that I thought were to small to send to 330 back in the Spring, that only had 2 leaf nodes. I just stuck them in the base of a 55 gallon drum with dirt and manure. They are 3' in diameter now.

As long as I remember to occasionally water them, almost all of the cuttings I have planted have become bushes.



Keith

What hormone do you guys use to propagate? I'm rather interested.

That's awesome. I only have the native elderberry variety on my farm. I picked another 5gal bucket of berries yesterday. I do enjoy making elderberry wine, syrup, and gummies. Curious though, do the other varieties have more medicinal properties? or are there varieties better for wine?

Good deal, Thanks!

I assume you cut in spring b4 leaves show up?

Can you describe your cutting process, as if you were talking to a 5 year old? lol Like best size and part of plant to cut etc...

For the last few years, I have been cutting off pieces of elderberry, from 1 and 2 year old wood growth, with 3 leaf nodes. I've been cutting them when the leaves are fairly well budded to fully open, but small. I make the lowest cut at an around 45 degree angle and the top cut flat. I push the cuttings into soil with the middle node just slightly below the surface. The cuttings put out shoots from both the highest node and the one just below the dirt. No rooting hormone is needed. Usually 100% of the cuttings will root. Besides keeping the dirt fairly moist, they receive no other care.

This year, I stuck 2, 2 leaf node cuttings in with the top node just barely above the ground. They out performed in growth the few 3 node cuttings I planted this year, by a lot. The difference could have been the soil I put them in, which had a lot of rabbit manure and coffee grounds, but next year I am going to try planting a lot of 2 leaf node cuttings.

The cuttings will flower and fruit, after flowering, their first year, if you don't remove the flowers. They grow better if you remove the flowers.

My main bush showed up by a down spout in 2012 or 2013. I recognized it as elderberry and decided to leave it. I ended up mowing it once and one of the dogs or one of us broke it off, at least twice, but it kept growing back. It's now roughly 14' by 16'. It gets around 60 pounds of fruited heads every year. I have sent out a few hundred clones of it and sold and given away a couple hundred rooted cuttings of it. It appears to be a naturally superior variety to the rest of the wild elderberry bushes in my area.

Beaverpeeler, Carl, donated cuttings from her to the National Germplasm Depository in Corvalis, Oregon, where they now grow her. I got to name my variety at the depository. i named my elderberry bush Remembrance after the elderberry dryad in the Hans Christian Anderson story, "The Little Elder Mother".

Keith