Elderberry - Deeper Thoughts on Pruning
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- Опубликовано: 24 май 2024
- www.edibleacres.org
Elderberry. Wow, what a wonderful character. I endeavor to share some ideas and observations of what I've learned about this amazing being in how it responds to pruning in our landscape during dormant season. Hard cuts to ground, partial and pruning cuts and complete open / non-cuts. What happens? I'm happy to share my limited understanding in this video and very welcome to discussion in the comments of folks who know such a wide range more!
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Happy growing!
People will be watching and learning from your vids decades from now
I Thought you was selling them
I thought you was selling them.
I want to buy a few
I’m using elderberry as a privacy hedge in my suburban backyard. The birds love them.
I’ve always pruned them neatly to stay in the neighborhood’s good graces but it seems I was helping the plants remain vigorous as well. Good video!
I rooted a good 16 cuttings this Spring to do the same on my property. Put up a wire fence and will plant elderberry along it to retain the dogs yet look natural. They seem to be the perfect plant for the job.
That cutting for regrowth advice is exactly what I needed. My 50+ elders appreciate it.
A much needed video. Thanks for sharing your observations. 20 years of knowledge fast tracked.
I also noticed my older elderberries thinning out. Thanks for the info!
💓💓💓 now I know where Ive gone wrong Many thanks
We have over 100 elderberry bushes for 7 years and we too feel like we’re still learning in our food forest. Thanks for this walk through of all your coppice, pollarding and other pruning approaches. 🎉
Would you?
Like to sell a couple .
While I prune Adams, York,and Bob Gordon to the ground biannually, I use a different approach when pruning Wyldewood. These I prune annually by pruning out all canes older than two years. Because Wyldewood fruits on second year wood (or so I've read), I still obtain an annual harvest.
Thanks brother. I am only on year 3 working with these and have been scratching my head about pruning/maintaining!
My older plantings have decided that this is their year to really take off, I've got a foot or more of growth on several of them, some from cuttings from roadside plants near our site, some that we got from Black Creek Farm and Nursery. Flower buds on at least one for the first time. It looks like many of the cuttings we got from you this spring are leafed out and hopefully working to establish themselves this year before taking off next year! :)
Your neighbour has plenty of privacy now! That 4 years old planting looks amazing!🤗💛🤗
I wasnt aware of the need to prune. My elders are still young. Thanks for sharing your helpful experience! I will be pruning in the Spring!
Use your judgement, it's just more an offering of my observation over the years and pruning seems to help keep older plants gaining new freshness in life
One of my elderberries (blue) was looking leggy, sparse, and sad this year. It was also sending up new shoots from the ground, so I cut all the leggy woody stuff to the ground and it's rebounding so quickly with the new growth! Great info as always, thank you!
Very good to hear!
I accidently planted 2 different elderberry's in my garden a little close together and after you said to cut them back I did and oh my goodness !!!! I have enough berries for all my neighbors , they are so full !!!! I am in N Texas where it is very hot and they seem to love it ! Oh and I now have about 20 plants out around my garden , thanks to your showing me how to multiply!!!!!
The deer prune my elderberries without regard to my plans so now I'll focus on American dominant varieties. Thank you
American black elderberry is one of the greatest plants, seems to me. It can be grown like a bush, like canes, or like a tree. It can thrive when annually cut, like a grass. Its medicinal and nutritional properties are impressive. It propagates easily from cuttings. Its blooms are as large and bright and as ornamental as any, and also as late and frost-proof as any. And edible, like its fruit. Comparatively, it excels in many ways. Wildlife love it. It's so precocious that its rooted cuttings may typically blossom. A very lively plant, very rewarding to work with toward many ends. Its individual fruits are small and not especially sweet, otherwise this plant would be far more grown and appreciated than it currently is.
Dang! I wish
I knew this earlier this year! There’s always next year. Thanks for the info, Sean 👍🏻
Very useful information I can use in my garden.
I love these in depth concepts you go into. Much respect!
I have wild American elderberry bushes. It's great to know that I can cut it extremely back this winter so to keep the fruit in reach.
This explosion of growth shows well chosen plants for the context, good vibes and knowledge of management (your skills !) make things thrive
On your advice I hard cut my elderberry shrubs this last winter and boy oh boy, I can second everything you say here.
Amazing growth in that chicken extension, thanks for sharing your knowledge as always
Of course. Yeah, I need to do an update video on that scene sometime soon
Love Marge and Bob Gordon! Thanks for sharing your pruning observations.
I'm growing a row of marge elderberries so this was helpful, thank you!
Here in Europe, my 1/2 hectare field that used to be just grass (horses/mowing) is coming back to life after only 2 years of leaving it alone, with huge amounts of volunteer elders, natives. Very strong pioneer plant. Next winter I’ll do a big round of pruning. Thanks for the helpful info, big differences in European and American. There are elders next to pine trees here that just climbed up 6/7 meters. Not very useful for crop but it looks nice.
That was very interesting. My own experience in uk with 'wild' elderberry, was that they were long lived, but the centre of the Bush seemed to get elderly and rot out, no doubt helped by my habit of Den making in a particular bush, and then cutting long branches to weave thro the outer uprights to keep it more secret. Here in New Zealand, on heavy clay, my bushes were slowish to increase size. That was near Auckland, Now down in the Manawatu, I planted a nursery specimen, and found my beds being overrun with enthusiastic suckers very quickly indeed. Elderberry is regarded as a pernicious weed here, and in Auckland I made sure that we either used the flowers, or the berries, in their entirety so that we were not causing more problems. Here in the Manawatu , we didn't get a single berry, as the birds took the lot, thankfully , before they were ripe, so again, hopefully not adding to the problems associated with pernicious weeds. So sadly, I dug the whole lot out, and won't be getting any more. So many things grow with way too much enthusiasm here, to the detriment of the natives. I know this is at a tangent to your subject of pruning, but still relevant I feel. Part of me wants to say...well if it grows well, that's surely good for any eco system, but I have seen the results of pampas grass escaping from gardens in the winter less north, and taking over huge areas, and bindweed getting established til it strangles everything. Balance is important too.
I spoke to a German elderberry farm. They train their elderberry bushes to be single-stemmed and cut away the two-year-old wood that has borne fruit at waist height every winter. This way they have new shoots and a harvest every year.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts via video over the years on American elderberrys. It's become one of my favorite plants.
In a prairie restoration area I walk by, they burned the field this past fall/winter. The elderberries growing in the field, after havng been burned down, look incredible.
I'd imagine. I could see them being phenomenal at responding to thoughtful and infrequent burning early enough in the spring
Thank you very much for this video. I have 5 American Elder, several years old, and pruned them some last winter. They are already full of blooms this year and look pretty good but I will be doing a hard pollarding prune this coming dormant season because I want to continue to have healthy plants. I am in the Piedmont area of NC.
I grew them for the first time two years ago from cuttings and cut them down to the ground last year and thy are huge and have an abundance of flowers:)
Thank you, as always, for sharing your wisdom and insights, Sean! I "soft trimmed" my Sambucus Canadensis last season, and this year (year 4) they had some dead limbs. I'll have to experiment with your hard trimming methods. It feel so wrong to cut these beautiful bushes back, but I would be overjoyed if it helps them thrive!
I just purchaced 100 each of Adams, Wildwood, Bob Gordon and Ranch to start a "You Pick" Elderberry farm. I can't wait to see it grow.
Ranch is our most vigorous growing variety here in North Georgia. Really huge clusters of flowers and plenty of fruits for the birds and us!
Thanks, 3feathers. Where in N. Georgia, I am in NW Georgia?
@@michaelbessette8685 We are in Ellijay
We are in Trion.
Great video thanks. We have wild elderberry growing everywhere here in Ireland
I planted 3 Adam’s and 3 Ranch last year in my backyard in a spot that gets wet often. I had to prune one this spring already as it had a weird shoot that shot up from one side. I’ve already rooted the cutting and will plant it with the others. Thanks for this video to help a new elderberry grower!
Good find on the signposts, a friend of mine just bought some at an auction for $5 LF. (Canadian)
Those are awesome. Even the elderberries you didn't cut back hard. This is my second season of growing Scotia and York. So, I have very little to add to the conversation except... I'm excited for the journey. I always look forward to your thoughts.
We have an elder that went crazy last year, the growth was sprawling. so much so, that one branch cracked and broke off.
So this spring I cut it back, hard: a pollard about knee high. Currently, that bush is about six feet tall with a more compact form. Full of flowers right now.
The cuttings were quite woody. I cut them into into about 2.5 - 3 foot lengths, and stuck them into various places around our homestead. They all survived, and now have small "balls" of green at the top with a central flower cluster. I now know they elder is an American variety! Thank you for that information, because the ID tags are long gone.
I continue to be amazed by the elder plants. I pollarded the one in front of my chicken coop and it is absolutely ginormous now. I am glad to know that coppicing keeps the plants young and vital as mine are going on 5+ years old now. I must have an american variety because all of the new growth have flowers. Thank you for sharing your insights.
Hi I live in the UK and can confirm that european elder seems to flower on second year wood. They are flowering now in mid-late May. But we've had very damp springs in the past couple of years and the pollination hasn't been great, resulting in a poor crop of berries later. I have got an american elder but it's very young and only a year or two old but it has been moved a couple of times, so waiting to see how that performs. I acquired it because I heard that if you don't have a second plant it won't fruit but flower for much longer and it's the flowers I am hoping to harvest for infusions and drinks.
Hi Sean. I have some Elderberry seeds to plant this fall. I've also got 2 Red Currant bushes on order from a local nursery. Supper excited to make my 1 acre lawn disappear. I have many seedlings potted and waiting for signs of life and many more seeds cold stratifying. Some notible memtions, Osage Orange, Hardy Orange (Flying Dragon), Sea Buckthorne, Paw Paw, Red Goji, Black Goji,American Persimmons,Shagbark Hickory and many more. Lol. Also putting in a all veg garden and just completed making a very large perenial food garden bed. Just added a Granny Smith Dwarf variety Apple tree and Dwarf Gala apple tree on order. Im fortunate in the sense that my yard gets full sun on about 90 % it for the full day. I really need.and want to add Chickens to the mix here. Hopefully,next spring. Great video. Best wishes.
Amazing!
I have a hedge of American elderberry. I wish I kept better track, but it seemd that canes peaked around 3-4 years old. Tons of flowers and unimaginable amounts of honey bees. After that they started thinning out and looking weak so I started pruning. Hardest yet this year, I cut out any cane older than 1 year. Mine also topped out at around 6 feet tall. I wish I had some that grew taller.
Only have pure European elder, so S. nigra. I prune mine hard, removing all 2-year old wood that has has fruits, but keeping the unbranched, 1-year old shoots, which I thin out to 6-12 (depending on plant age and vigour). All of this happens at a pollarding height of 1m (3 feet). This keeps the plants juvenile, with a new growth up to 4m long, but also produces large flower clusters (sometimes 30cm (1 foot) in diameter), which are easy and fast to pick as flowers or as berries. It also keeps the flowers and berries relatively accessible for easy harvest. I know a few elderberry "trees" with 30 cm diameter trunk and 5-10m height, there is no way to harvest them, except flying like a bird. (Although brids get a huge portion of my shorter elderberries as well).
Wonderful and thorough sharing of your direct experience, I love it!
@@edibleacres Thanks! Pruning elders seems to me well worth the little effort as one saves much more time during the harvest as the flower heads are much less in number, but much bigger in size and lower to the ground.
This can even be exaggerated by picking some flowers (like 1/4-1/2), which does not reduce thr berry yield, but further increases the weight of the individual berries and clusters left as fewer berries in each cluster get aborted (enough energy by the plant to develop every single flower in a cluster into aberry). I had some berry clusters at >1kg (2pounds) and the smalles around 500g (1pound) when trying to perfect the balance between pruning, 1-year old shoots remaining, flowers harvested, leaves-to-remaining flowers ratio, etc..
The very first example shows so much already : the pruned vs unpruned part of the same plant !
My grandson & I made ,capers’ from our elderberries. A bit crunchy, but good. Thanks for the video
Another benefit of hard pruning: more even ripening of berries within a head. If the outer berries are ripe while the center berries remain green, pruning might help.
We live in Missouri near St. Louis and have 100 plants that yielded well over 200 lbs of berries last year. This was the first year we cut back to just 2-3" in February. At the time the plants had already begun small sprouts here and there due to wacky weather. Our plants experienced crazy growth...most up to 5-6' tall in just 12 weeks. Enter our current disappointment...the storms of the last month have knocked down at least one third of that super fast growth. I should have mentioned we have Wylde Wood and Bob Gordon...both varieties do have blossoms on this new growth. We did not fertilize this year or last fall...but did use rabbit manure compost the previous fall in 2022.
We have decided we will not cut back so heavily next winter in order to have some stronger growth to help stabilize the newer growth in heavy winds. But at this point we are just praying we have some crop for our use next year.
Thank you so much for your observations!
I have Bob Gordons in NE Oklahoma. I've never left them unpruned, and they are prolific in flower production right now. I have American elder (I foraged cuttings from local roadsides) and have propagated them with success and they are blooming heavily now in my yard in their third year.
I’m just starting my elderberry journey. I’m in the Pacific Northwest and it’s the Blue Elderberry that’s native here. However, I’m growing a lot of the cultivars that you have there: Adams, Bob Gordon, Marge (European and American elder mix), Heichberg (I’m sure I spelled that incorrectly), Nova, York, and Johns. I also have a blue Elder. I’m trying to let them grow for three years and get well established and then cut them back like shrubs keeping them fresh. From my research I’ve learned from others that Elders are great for soil, and I’m hoping to learn how to harvest the seeds in time, and have planted American Elders by Europeans to encourage that hybridization.
What a great and diverse exploration you are getting into!
Do you have a video about the uses for wild parsnip? Great elder info! Thanks!
What are your different applications for Cow parsnip? We have tons of Red elderberry (Sambucus racemosa) on our property, I do cut them back aggressively and the vigorous regrowth serves as an abundant source of mulch! Wonderful video as always!
Cow parsnip is a food in the root if we wanted and it provides a ton of soil building and nectar flow so when we can work around them we like to
Hi Sean, this was very interesting. Here in California, we have a York and a Nova elder. I think they're primarily American. We cut them down to about 5 ft every winter and remove the oldest canes. They produce about 20 gallons of berries yearly. My daughter and I recently started a new one from a cutting, which she tells me is a native to California and western Mexico. Their berries have a white coating like grapes and they're supposed to have more of the medicinal components. I'm watching it grow to see how it's structured so I can figure out how to prune it. The parent bush/tree is along a hiking path and it hasn't been pruned in years.
Great stuff! I wonder if you are describing a 'blue elderberry'. We don't have them here but they are native out west I understand
I live in the southwest in New Mexico where a common landscape plant is Mexican Elderberry (blue elderberry Sambucus nigra) which is bery easy to take cuttings and root in the way you described. We have started about 15 trees. They grow into a dense, thick tree. We get no berries. In the neighborhood and town, i see many trees but no berries. Last year, i started some American elderberry cuttings, hoping they would pollinate some, but no luck. Lots of flowers on both kinds this year, but no fruit set. I am wondering if i need another clone of the Mexican elderberry to do the job. I really just want the fruits on that variety for the birds. I enjoyed and agree with your findings about pruning elderberries. One youtuber suggested cutting them way back gives you a strong plant with a good-sized head of larger fruit, whereas a larger uncut stem will give you many smaller heads.
Mine are still being established, but my management plan is going to be based on something I came across a few years ago in my research, that being that, in commercial elderberry plantings, after harvest in the fall they’re cut all the way down to the ground. Basically coppiced. I think that is mostly with American varieties though. I also have a wild patch that I have not been the best about managing and the years when I didn’t get in there to cut it back hard it definitely looks like it’s senescing. Coppicing each year should give me LOADS of cuttings, too!
I can’t speak to anything regarding European genetics as I don’t currently have any in my area, but my experience with managing the native species (Sambucus caerulea) on my land (southern WA area) has been the exact same as yours, Sean. I moved to my place 10 years ago and had no real knowledge of how to manage the Elders that were already growing here.
There was one very large, tree-formed one that the previous owners had allowed to grow just on the inside of a fenced in annual garden area. In my naivety, I coppiced it that first late winter as I wanted to open up the area and let more morning light into the garden area and because, late in the season when it was full of fruit and quite top heavy, the high winds I get in my area were causing the tree to really push up against and damage the fence. Thinking I had taken care of the “problem” I went about planting my early season garden out.
Well, to my surprise, a few weeks later, that tree soon became a massive bush of vigorous elder shoots. At that point, I just accepted that I wasn’t going to be able to remove this character from the garden, so best just to learn how to properly manage it. And ever since, it, along with all the others that I have propagated or that the birds have planted, just get yearly late winter pruning to keep them on the “smaller” bush size, healthy, vigorous, and highly productive. They all have no problem fruiting on that first year growth.
This Spring, I did buy some seeds of a wild Ukrainian black elder variety from EFN that I am looking forward to working with. Got them too late this season to get them going as they take a long, detailed process to break dormancy, but will begin that work later this Fall and see how they express themselves in my area over the next few years.
and we planted 14 more fr4om the cutting this spring next to our chicken run.
I just walked by an Elder that was indeed a full blown tree. Think the demeanor of a typical freestanding 50 to 70 y o oak. Probably 100%european as it was in a fiel in France. Full blom.
Would love to hear your thoughts on cow parsnip and wild parsnip.
What size or age would you suggest starting the hard prunes at?
I don't have a number for you, but most of our plants after about 5-8 years depending on site conditions seem to really respond well to it
Does anyone have experience using elderberry as forage for sheep or goats? What have your results been? Is it a productive partnership, or do they graze it too hard for it to remain healthy?
Do you have a video on how to propagate the elderberry bushes? What time of year and how?
ruclips.net/video/aBM4Lehmp40/видео.html - You can search our videos as well and the titles generally are descriptive enough to have you find what you are looking for...
We do them as dormant hardwood later winter generally.
Thank you so much for the pruning info!! Can you explain what you meant by field ready elderberry cuttings?
That means cuttings or plants I deem robust enough to be established directly where we want to see them grow, out in the field or otherwise...
I am in gta, ontario. I have had limited success with Adam. My Victoria just died.
Bob Gordon has been very abundant in the shade of the bungalow. It is N E and beside small garlic bed. The other Bob Gordon are in a wet area. They are only 4 or 5 feet.
I have tried to root dormant cuttings without success. Now i am just cutting new green cuttings and put them in existing pots.
The one in the shadow of the house is probably 10 tall with several stems. I thought the sunny areas would have been the really successful specimens.
This came at just the right time. I’mputtung in several elderberry varieties this year from bare roots and from cuttings I planted in a container last fall. Question: do I treat the Currant I purchased from you this winter the same way in cutting back? Thanks!
My experience tells me that our blue elder out west behaves different in nearly every way. It does seem to regenerate very quickly though, although my experience there is actually from fire, rather than pruning. I just wish they rooted as easily as the black. I haven't had any success with rooting them.
Interesting that has been your experience as I too am surrounded by only blue elder (southern WA) and work with it regularly. I do hard prunes (both coppice and pollard) in late winter and the growth I get from doing so is quite vigorous and productive. And, as far as rooting them from cuttings, I have had the best success with using 12-16” long, 1/2”+ diameter cuttings of first year growth during the late winter (when I’m doing my pruning) and keeping them in my unheated garage in a loose soil/sand/coco coir medium (pushed in about 6-8”) until they start to show signs of new growth at which point I move them outside. I usually get around 70-80% success rate and find that the larger diameter ones tend to do the best.
Elderberries are the ultimate equalizer against the plum curcullio - If you can’t get apples and peaches, at least you can get elderberry jam.!
Great way to think about it!!! Currants and Aronia and Goumi and Autumn Olive all check that box for us, too...
I have an elderberry that I bought as a very small shrub about 10 years ago. It is now towering over my house, having not been prunned during that time. This year, for the first time, the lower part of the plant did not leaf out although the upper 3/4 looks healthy and has lots of flowers. I obviously do not know much about elderberry because I had no idea that it would get so tall. My original thought was to prune the leafless part of the shrub, which would allow me to create a path on that (west) side of my garden but, after seeing your video and the fact that you pruned from the top down, I'm not sure that would be good for the plant. Any ideas? I am 83 years old, so I will not be pruning it myself and I do not want to leave the decision up to anyone else without advice.
😊💚🌱🌻🐝
Thanks for the informative video, Sean! I've been working on digging suckers and potting them to share with others. I'm finding they immediately wilt and need extra watering and care to become stable. Any thoughts?
I would not dig or cut elder at this time of year, with very active growth... Wait until dormant and dig and offer as bare root, or dig next spring before leafing out and pot them up, they'll do much better
@@edibleacres thank you!
Is there anything wrong with leaving elder trees to grow as they wish? There are loads of elder trees growing wild all over the uk and they seem to do just fine
Mine are just in first year with a few shoots. When would it be ok to start pruning?
Can I buy from you that is I have been trying to get 6:01 6:02
I have two California Native elderberries in my suburban food forest. They are still fairly young and this is the first year of vigorous growth. Are you saying that with American genetics, these will fruit the first year after pruning? Or do they flower and fruit on 2nd year growth?
Thank you for all the tips!
How well do green stem cuttings root of elders?
In my experience, they don’t.
@@tcoxor52 F
Ive heard that they can be very good grern manure and also as a compost activator, dead or alive.
I wonder, are they safe to burn/pyrolosis?
I wouldn't burn them... Green manure and mulch yes for sure. They are such high water content and so low density that it would be a bad move to char them (I think)
How can you tell in advance which ones to cut harder? Basically just if they have American genetics, cut them more often?
There is more to it but basically American dominant genetics can/should be cut hard every few years to ground for a good reset.