Elderberries - an interesting idea.

[Ken L]

I've noticed that year on year, the same elderberry trees can be relied upon to produce heavy crops of good quality fruit whilst others either produce lots of leaf and little fruit or else produce scrawny little bunches that are hardly worth picking.
For sure some of this will be down to soil type, moisture levels and the amount of light available but a fair bit of it seems to be down to the genetics of the individual tree.
With that thought in mind, I just had a look on the net and found this on a US site:

There is no real need to purchase elderberry plants from retailers. They grow quite well from cuttings. If you take a cuttings from 2nd year growth in very early spring and stick it in the ground where you eventually want a elderberry bush, the success rate is somewhere around 70%. That's right... if you stick 10 elderberry cuttings in the ground, up to 7 will take hold. Which is probably why elderberrys are so prolific in the wild. I don't believe it has anything to do with seeding, but rather how tender the canes are.

Now it might take a few years but the prospect of cloning the very best local trees and spreading them about a bit locally does have a certain appeal.

 

[tonyhibbett]

A new one on me, but interesting. Consider the wild strawberry and blackberry and their cultivated equivalents in terms of yield and quality.

 

[Ken L]

Getting clones of the dozen best trees that you can find growing in close proximity is a good start. After that would come growing from their seed and selecting the best offspring but that would be a proper long term project.
I'll be happy to have reliable local access to good berries.

There's miles of local canal embankments hereabouts that could do with a native elderberry bush every 10m - if nothing else, they're native unlike buddleia and the birds love 'em.

 

[xhalmers_860]

Definately a good idea.

I often think that we need to break down this division between our ideas of cultivation and wild-foraging. For a start we owe a lot to old English kings and the Romans for many of the edible wild plants that grow on the auld highways.

In addition to planting, you might also consider actual pruning to increase productivity!

One resource you might want to check out is the Transition movement, many of whom in there (right or wrong) suspicion that dark times are ahead in the transition to a post-oil agricultural system, do plant out wild fruit and nut trees. Though taking plants is more obviously illegal, new trees can be a pain for landholders and if you plant on farmland you might want to consider that. And young saplings are likely to be decimated by sheep. Maybe only plant where there are already a few.

Let me know how it goes. I picked from a couple of really good trees last week, I'll go back and take some cuttings. Its probably important to actually know where to take the cuttings from, for the sake of both success and the health of the established tree. I'll try to remember to post on my findings there.

 

[PD]

I've always thought that the common elder tree is ripe ( excuse the pun ) for some selective breeding and cross breeding by the plant people. Its a native plant, tolerant of most soils easy to grow and naturally produces a goodly quantity of fruit. Its also a decorative shrub to look at.
Just image it if they crossed it with a grape vine or blackberry.... Great big fruits hanging down for the picking. It must be an easy thing to do. All I can think of is perhaps the grape growers are not keen on the idea.

 

[Ken L]

You can't cross from one family of plants to another but yes, selective breading can produce dramatic increases in yields.

 

[GeorgeSalt]

I've always thought that the common elder tree is ripe ( excuse the pun ) for some selective breeding and cross breeding by the plant people. Its a native plant, tolerant of most soils easy to grow and naturally produces a goodly quantity of fruit. Its also a decorative shrub to look at.
Just image it if they crossed it with a grape vine or blackberry.... Great big fruits hanging down for the picking. It must be an easy thing to do. All I can think of is perhaps the grape growers are not keen on the idea.

I agree.. it's definitely a species in need of a champion to take it to the next level. Selective breeding so far seems to have been restricted to advancing its ornamental features. Is anyone commercially growing elder? I know in Europe a variety of native fruiting shrubs and culivated, I've seen programmes on German regional television showing Buckthorn (Sanddorn) being grown (rather than foraged).

 

[Ken L]

It seems that elderberries are grown commercially in Germany and Austria.
Might be interesting.
In the US, where they have several elderberry species, there's even a website and forum dedicated to elderberries Being Americans though, they use them for jams, tinctures, pies and the like - they don't know what they're missing.

 

[screamlead]

I got some elderberry seeds brought over to turkey last year. i now have one quite medium plant and about 10 smaller ones all in a planting tray waiting to be planted into larger pots. I am also going to give away a few to a m8 who has a small holding higher up the mountains from me and gets what they call all four seasons, so they may grow better there.
I also have about 5 blackthorn plants grown from seed too (sloes) which are about 10 inches tall now and again need planting out soon - once the weather cools down over here.

 

[Ken L]

Having found some incredibly productive trees, I've got all my elderberry wine on the go for this year but on my travels, I managed to stumble on a freak tree.
Unfortunately, most of the fruit was to high to reach and the tree itself is on private land but what interests me is the elderberries themselves. They are in good bunches but the individual berries are four or five times the size of ordinary elderberries. Each one is the size of a baked bean.
Guess where I'll be going for cuttings in the spring......

 

[weepete]

Does bigger berries mean better fruit for wine though? I was watching a programe recently about wine makers and they were saying that the best wine grapes were smaller than the good eating ones, as the contained a more concentrated flavour, which ment they didn't taste good but were better got wine. Just wondering if this could apply to other fruit too

 

[hedgerow pete]

as someone with a great knowledge of gorillia gardening, and taking of and planting wild sourced cuttings, heres some pointers for you.

to take a cutting from an elderberry tree is easy go for this years growth which is slightly green rather than old hard wood, about 300mm long and 10 to 15mm in diameter, take as many as you can lets say ten per tree, take the home and plant them up in a bucket leave over the winter , the ones that shoot in the spring replant where you want with a 2 foot square pice of carpet around them to give some weed protection untill they get started.


now the tree you actually choose is very very harder to do, yes we want a tree laiden with fruit rather than a scabby one, but what we really need to find is a tree that is low in tannins, high is sugars and loaded with fruit, i made wine from a tree the once that was a massive bounty of fruit the reason why was it was so bitter even the birds would not eat it.

by a sugar tester from fleabay or trial on you tongue for the best fruit and only sample off that tree,

next up pruning wild trees will make a massive difference as well, the tree fruit on new wood not old, so i usually prune my canal side bank trees every other year, and take out the old and dead and prune to allow light in, i also trim the hieght and go for width instead,

buy a long tree pruner to collect and harvest high up ones i do

you can buy elderberry trees from a supplier of trees in the isle of white, yes one is exspencive but i use that one i brought as my cuttings supplier for all the rest of the trees i do.

and out of intrest i work ( harvest ,prune, trim, feed, weed supress, and gernerally look after) about 50 trees of the elderberry style on several canal banks and waste sites in and around brum.

 

[Ken L]

Interesting stuff Pete.
You contradict the US advice about taking cuttings in the spring but I presume you've tried it and it works.
My local Morrisons currently sell eight one gallon plant pots for 99p so I might give this a go this year.
Any particular month that you'd recommend for taking the cuttings and are you waiting for the leaves to drop first to minimise desiccation ?
Also, do you have any thoughts on soils or is it just well drained with a bit of compost ?

BTW, I'm not going to ask where your trees are but I do know that they're not along the mainline canal from Smethwick to Birmingham city centre because that's one of my regular cycle routes and i do keep my eyes open.

 

[hedgerow pete]

i normally do my cuttings around october or march time the choice is yours
i just use standard garden soil and go for quantity rather than quallity with cuttings

as for the cycle route, yes eight of my trees are on the smethwick to brum canal, i was gutted last year though british waterways the plonkers just after floweer ing and fruit setting they can along and butcherd all the canal side trees, problem is what one person considers as a fruit tree many others think its a waste land tree

 

[Ken L]

They are ?
They must be the ones that were almost in Ladywood and which I couldn't find this year then.
The only other ones that I know of along there are the ones in Langley under the motorway bridge - and they're not really in an ideal spot.
Sorry to hear you lost them.
I'll be thinking carefully about where my cuttings will go but first thing's first, I've got to establish them first.