Raintree Nursery's Elderberry Growing Guide

[Music] hey folks it's laura sweeney with rain tree nursery and today we're going to talk about elderberries look at this beautiful bush look at all the fruit on this oh my goodness elderberries are so useful in your yard the fruit is useful the flowers are useful let's talk about how to use them and how to grow them the elderberry family is called sambucus and there are three major types of sambucus relatives in the family there's the black european elderberry which is sambucus nikra there's the american black elderberry which is sambucus canadensis and then there is the american blue elderberry or sambucus cerulea which is normally found on the west coast they're all medicinal they're all great to grow so elderberries are considered self-fruitful plants which means you only need to have one to actually get fruit however because everybody wants as much fruit as possible on an elderberry i usually try to encourage folks to get them in pairs they have to be members of the same branch of the family in order to cross pollinate so san because pollinates with sambucus and canadensis with canadensis cerulea with cerulean so elderberry plants can be relatively small or they can be quite large it depends on the variety there are some of the canidensis family that can be as short as four feet tall although most elderberry bushes run between the six to eight foot tall range the sambucus cerulea tends to be very tall can get up to 30 feet tall so that's a big bush elderberries are also slightly unusual in that they are wind pollinated plants so even if you don't have a lot of bees in your neighborhood you'll still get regular fruit to harvest because it's the wind that pollinates from one plant to another you want to make sure to have the plants within 50 feet of each other so the wind can do its job in cross-pollinating and they are a late spring bloomer so even if you have really unreliable spring weather these will still regularly set fruit for you the shape of this plant is wonderful many upright stems and a fountain shape there's a lot coming up from the base and that's relatively small but as you get toward the top you see it blooms out and it makes it a particularly good hedgerow plant lots of upright stems mean you also have good coverage in the winter when there's no leaves on the branches as well now down below it's a relatively tight cluster of uprights so you can plant other things down below for springtime interest and you can also cut the whole plant directly to the ground if you're worried about sanitation or if you want to rejuvenate the plant there are commercial growers that do that every year it's a very durable plant because elderberries bloom so late in the season you can also harvest the berries late we're at the end of summer or the end of the warm season and these are just starting to get ripe you can see they ripen unevenly here we have perfectly ripe berries but also unripe berries too so if you miss the first flush of berries because the birds have taken them you will get a second flush so don't worry now you can also harvest the blossoms as well they're wonderful for tea you can make champagne out of them they're so much fun to use but of course you don't want to take off all the blooms because then you aren't going to have any berries elderberries are also a very easy to grow plant they would prefer full sun but they will take partial shade they will also take wet feet so if you have a wintertime marshy spot that's in the sun you can definitely put your elderberry there they usually grow right on the edge of the sunny edge of forested spots so if you think about how they grow in nature it'll help you to place them in your garden here's another example of a beautiful elderberry bush this bush has only been in the ground for three years and look at the incredible yield that you're getting on this plant there aren't very many pests that would bother an elderberry the only thing you kind of have to watch out for is the birds because they do love the fruit almost as much as we do and that's it for now thanks for joining us see you next time

Channel: Raintree Nursery

Views: 32,581

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Id: dJ33YN8Ci18

Length: 5min 9sec (309 seconds)

Published: Thu May 13 2021