Grow Your Own Food And Medicine From This One Amazing Tree - Elderflowers & Elderberries

hey guys welcome back so this right here is an elderberry and it's considered as one of nature's greatest healing plants so it's a really awesome one to have in the garden i'm really excited to use both the flowers and the berries in today's video and explore some of the medicinal uses for these as well as some of the ways that you can use them as food but this plant has a really long history of medicinal use in many different cultures and they've been used in so many different ways so i'll bring you in close and we can talk a little bit about how you can grow and propagate these before getting into exploring the flowers and the berries so this one here is a black elder it's the european type called sambucus and it's really closely related to the american black elder and great news for those of you who live in a cold climate these are from a temperate area and so they can survive really cold temperatures this one down to about negative 30 degrees celsius and the american one even colder than that there's also blue elderberries which is another really closely related species and so the things that we do if the berries and the flowers today will apply to all of these three that we've talked about there is also red elder berry but there's a bit more controversy around them and their toxicity and whether you should use them or not from what i understand i think the seeds within the berries have more toxicity in them than the likes of the black elder and so they require more processing in order to use them and most of the medicinal research has been done on blackout anyway so these are the ones we're going to be focusing on today i planted this around 18 months ago when it was just a little plant so these do grow quite quickly and i've read that the european type can get to around six metres tall so they're pretty massive whereas the american type only grows to around three and a half meters but in saying that you can just really aggressively prune them to the height that you want to keep them at and if you wanted to you could even just chop them right off at the base and they'll fully just replenish and grow right back out of the ground this one here is just planted out in the open in the full sun but they will also do well in partial shade the main thing is you don't plant it in a really hot and dry location and aside from that i've just mulched this really heavily with wood chips to help to retain that moisture as well and feed the tree over time so it's just after midwinter right now and we're going to take a cutting to propagate this for identifying these you can see that they've got this grayish bark with these little bumps on them and just a quick interesting side note these bumps are called lenticels and they basically act like a pore and they allow the passing of oxygen and carbon dioxide through the bark and into the internal tissues of the plant and lenticels can be found on fruits as well like this apple you can see those little dots there and i find it kind of interesting because it's something that we see all the time but we don't necessarily think about why it's there or what its purpose is anyway this plant is starting to come out of dormancy you can see the buds forming already so i'm a bit later than i wanted to be but we'll take a cutting anyway so i'm just taking a nice woody stem and it's good to use one that has at least four buds on it this one has a lot more than that though which is fine too but you can use a much shorter cutting if you want so i'm just pulling this mulch away and using a bamboo stick to make a hole in the ground and i'm removing the lower buds off the cutting and just pushing it down into the ground and it really is that simple you don't need any rooting hormone because they do take really easily if you live in a place where the ground freezes or you have snow you can still take your cuttings in winter but just put them into a sealed bag in the fridge until early spring when the ground is thawed out and then you can plant them out then okay now that it's spring the cutting has come to life and it's even started producing some flowers i am snipping the buds off though so that the plant can use its energy to establish without also producing berries while it's so young you can also propagate these by digging up the suckers so these usually grow as a multi-stemmed tree or bush and they produce these little suckers here and you just dig them up and plant them somewhere else if you want to grow another tree just one quick note though to say that these can become invasive in some areas around the world so just keep that in mind depending on where you live all right it's almost the first day of summer and we've got a ton of the outer flowers coming on smells pretty good i'd say it's got kind of a floral smell to it and a bit of sweetness yeah it's good it reminds me of summer so you can make the flowers into syrup or use them in cocktails make wine or tea out of them and it's even used in cosmetics like lotions the best time to harvest these is when the buds are freshly open and you can still see they've got lots of pollen on them which is this pale yellow dust and the pollen is the part that you want it's got a lot of the flavor and nutrients plus it also carries a natural yeast that you can use to ferment all sorts of different drinks the pollen will disappear though when the flowers get older and it can also get washed off in the rain so just pick them on a warm dry sunny day just as the flowers have opened up the more of these flowers you harvest obviously the less amount of berries that you're going to end up with so we're not going to pick too many we're going to leave most of these to turn into berries but let's take these and make them into a tea i'm just placing these on a drying rack and putting it inside a paper bag and i'll just leave it in a dark cupboard for at least a week whether you use the flowers fresh or dry it's important to make sure you remove the stems before you use them because they've got a cyanide producing compound in them and they shouldn't be eaten and that toxic compound is also found in the leaves roots seeds and the unripe fruits so it's important that you don't eat any of those parts of the plant as well although it can sound scary to some people to use a plant that has something in it that can generate cyanide there are other fruits that do this as well like the seeds and pits of apples cherries and apricots so they're not really that unique in terms of that toxicity so people often use the flower during the onset of a cold or flu especially when they feel a fever coming on the flowers are diaphoretic which means they can help to induce a healthy sweat to support the fever process which is of course our body's natural reaction for fighting a viral infection and these are really high in antioxidants as well it kind of just tastes like how it smells like a little bit sweet a bit of a sort of floral taste and it just tastes really clean like it feels like it would be really good for you and i'm not a huge tea drinker but i reckon this is pretty nice i would drink this and the fact that it's out of my garden is even better one of the things i forgot to mention about the flowers that some people do is they'll dip a whole cluster into batter fry it in oil and then sprinkle it with icing sugar and i mean even just the batter and the icing sugar i'm sure tastes amazing but probably not the healthiest way to have them although i'd be kind of interested to try it so if any of you have tried elderflower freshers let me know what it's like and yeah maybe i'll try them sometime alright guys so it's only taken around five weeks for the flowers to turn into the berries and get to this fully ripe stage so let's take some of these and we'll make them into both food and medicine so since this one here has quite a lot of green and red berries still in it we won't harvest that one just yet bunches like this though where all the berries are plump and a nice dark color those are the ones you want to go for and i'm just cutting these neatly at the base i've eaten a couple of the raw berries just to see what they're like but of course these do have the seeds inside with some of that toxicity and so it's not recommended to eat these in their raw state they can cause things like stomach upset and vomiting especially if you eat them in large amounts but like i say i've just eaten a couple just to give them a try and for me it was totally fine but i'm not recommending you guys try it the flavor is not really great anyway they've got low amounts of sweetness they're slightly tart and a little bit bitter as well and so you're not really missing much by not eating these raw but when you cook and heat them it makes them completely safe to eat and use and it makes them really versatile you can use them in all sorts of things like syrups jellies wine liqueurs and pies so since not all the berries are ripe yet we'll chuck the ones that we've got in the freezer and we'll wait until the rest have ripened up okay so the rest have ripened up now so we'll harvest the rest of them and we'll make something out of them so just like the flowers we've got to remove the stems off all the berries and these have been frozen so they're actually coming off really easily it's not really making a mess and getting juice everywhere so probably quite a good idea to freeze them and it makes it easier to get them off the stems there are still some stems in there though which we don't want so i'm just going to pick through these and get them all off so we've ended up with exactly three cups of elderberries which i think is pretty reasonable for a tree this young so we'll start by making a syrup that can be used as a medicine so in a pot on medium heat i'm adding two cups of outer berries two cups of water plus a cinnamon stick the berries are known for many benefits one of them being their flu fighting and antiviral properties and there's been a lot of studies done on these and it's shown that they can help to strengthen your immune response to these cold and flu viruses and what i found was really interesting is that researchers have found that compounds within elderberries can inhibit the viruses entry and replication in human cells and it does this by blocking those viral proteins responsible for viral attachment and entry into the cells and one thing they found is that it had a stronger effect in the later stages of the influenza cycle but yeah there has been studies done on people with colds and flus and the use of elderberry has been linked to a reduction in their symptoms as well as a quicker recovery so yeah sounds pretty good to me but if you want to check it out further i'll leave some links and resources down below so it's cooled off a bit now after simmering it for around half an hour so i'm just straining out all the seeds in the fruit just leaving behind the liquid so we've got to put equal amounts of honey to the amount of liquid that we've strained out so this is a big bucket of honey from our bees so we'll weigh some of this out it's a good idea just to make sure the liquids cooled off before you mix the honey in because if you heat honey up too much it can destroy some of its enzymes and antibacterial properties so we'll pour this into some jars to be stored in the fridge and look at that we've made exactly two full jars that's pretty good so while this cools down in the fridge let's use the rest of the berries to make a tiny little tart [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right let's start off by giving the syrup a try here we go interesting i can't really taste much of the elderberry it's mostly overpowered by honey there are some other flavors in there but it is i guess it's kind of hard to pinpoint because the honey is really strong you know there is a lot of honey in here you could use less but honey is a natural preservative so if you use less then it's not going to last quite as long but you could do that if you were going to use it up sooner but you know having the honey in here is very good as well honey is very medicinal and it's good for all sorts of different diseases and widely accepted as a really beneficial thing so i think that's pretty cool it's still a nice flavor it's still nice as a medicine ah so good so first of all that's really nice i'm just trying to think of what the flavor reminds me of but it doesn't really remind me of any other berry it's quite a unique flavour it's probably something that you know if you've had outer berries before and you had them again you'd recognize them straight away because it is quite unique i almost feel like it has kind of a like a wine taste slightly tart i really like it i feel like maybe some people would find it to be an acquired taste or something they weren't as keen on compared to other berries but i don't really know i guess you just have to try and see what you think if you haven't tried them before but i think it's a winner so as well as the flowers and fruit people have found other uses for these as well and even the wood can be useful because on the inside of it it's got like a soft pith and basically you can hollow it out and make it into things like whistles and floats which i reckon's pretty cool and you can even make it into an outer wand if you needed to defeat voldemort even the leaves have historically been used on skin as a poultice because it was thought to relieve pain and promote healing but there's just so many things that these plants have been used for traditionally that i haven't even covered today and if you've used elderberries or this plant before leave your experiences down below i'd be really interested to read those and i'm sure others would be as well also if you have any questions just leave them down there too but otherwise thanks so much for watching hopefully i'll see you in the next one [Music] got a lick of spoon

Channel: TheKiwiGrower

Views: 134,350

Keywords: grow your own food and medicine from this one amazing plant, thekiwigrower, the kiwi grower, sambucus nigra, elderflower, elderflowers, elder, elderberries, growing elderberries, how to harvest elderflower, how to harvest elderberries, american elderberry, european, blue elderberry, how to propagate elderberry, how to safely use elderberries, are elderberries toxic, toxicity, poisonous, garden, foraging, gardning, food forest, amazing plant, sambucus canadensis, ceruela, Sambucus racemosa

Id: wrj1XWnURXc

Length: 12min 58sec (778 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 18 2022