Things have been moving along since the thread on my elders getting frost damage while mulched with hay.

When I saw the damage I held back some cuttings rather than start the last row I had planned. Those cuttings were looking really ready to go in the ground, so I dug the dead ones and replaced them.

The first thing I noticed was that they weren't all dead. 3 out of 4 had fine white shoots coming up from the very bottom of the cutting. I'm not sure that they would have made it considering how big the shoots were in comparison to the cuttings and how far they still had to go, but I might have gotten by by waiting.

The second was how moist the soil was under the mulch. We haven't had a significant rain in 2 weeks and the ground is getting dry but that soil was almost soggy. You see Elder along ditches but it doesn't like it's feet wet. I think what saved it was.

Third, earthworms! I had seen that some critter had been burrowing in the mulch, in the row nearest the treeline, and had wondered what for. Well it was for earthworms. They are unbelievably thick under that mulch, thicker than in my worm bed. There are way more than could have hatched and grown in that time. I did pull a 3 ft. circle of sod out and replace it with 10 gal. of composted manure, when I planted, so it looks like the compost and the moisture have attracted all the worms out of the surrounding field. Worm holes aerate and drain the soil and I think that's whats saving the plants from being too wet. The elder is thriving, but figs might not do so well with this much moisture. I'm going to have to be careful when I start planting figs in ground.

Here is a picture of my elderberry thicket, with fresh mulch. The fig thicket is still on the drawing board.


I know it isn't very thick, yet, but I have high hopes for it. 

Which varieties did you plant?  What will you use the elderberries for?  Three years to fruit?

I  bought one 7 or 8 years ago that was suppose to be a domesticated heavy producer. I don't remember a name being given for the variety but I put it in a bad place for it and it hasn't shown me a thing. I took some cuttings off of that, and a wild one that volunteered on a compost bin and has been a heavy producer. I don't know which are which at this point. Some of them that were taken as cuttings in Dec. have flower heads on them now. I'll extract the juice and make syrup. it's good tasting and extremely good for you.

Several years ago I harvested elderberries behind a shopping mall.  I boiled them down with some sugar and put some syrup in the freezer and some in the refrigerator.  8 mo. later there was still no mold on the refrigerated syrup.  I use to take a spoon or 2 when I wanted something sweet or just when I felt like I was coming down with something.  They are blooming now in WI so I'll have to take a run by the mall and see if they still are growing behind the mall.  I bet elderberry taffy would be tasty!

I've got Adams and Smith varieties plus a wild one from the road side. This is year 2, and the flower heads are looking pretty good, so I am hoping for a pretty good harvest from my 6 clumps

Have any of you made fritters from the elderberry flowers?  I want to plant 2 varieties and maybe I can dig up some wild ones also.

When I was a child, Mom made a batch of elderberry jelly that didn't set. We used it as syrup over vanilla ice cream.  Picture five kids  with round, little bellies and Xs over their eyes - -X for ecstasy.

Has anyone used shredded paper for mulch for figs, or anything? It seems to work OK, but stays pretty heavy when wet and tends to crust over. I wonder if it's the way it's shredded.

Hay mulch has been giving me the same excellent results of soil improvement. I have a ring around the figs with pine mulch up to the trunk. The earthworm and other soil life have improved drainage and loosened the soil. We have started mulching new planting areas and throwing kitchen scraps there for the chickens. In no time, the soil has been worked by the worms and is easy to dig, plus weeds are reduced. Worms greatly improve structure and nutrient availability of soil passed through thier bodies, so I'm really liking this, reduces work for me.

I also grow elderberries in the lower area of my yard where the soil is moist and rich. My first elderberries were from roadside collections, selecting for flavor of the raw berries. I have added commercial varieties Bob Gordon, Voltra, Wyldewood and Nova. This will be the first year for fruit, and I will try making wine and syrup. I like wild foods, and elderberries are one of the highest antioxidant fruits. They have also been proven to shorten the duration of flu.

I have not tried elderflower fritters, but I have tried this with black locust and wisteria flowers. They were a big hit with everyone, including the kids! The floral flavor really comes through. The key is a very thin batter. Fry it up and sprinkle with powdered sugar, delicious!

Mike in Hanover,VA

My computer pooped so I'm writing on my phone, which limits me. I want to hear how the different varieties compare. I pruned my big wild bush very aggressively while it was dormant. It put a new sprout, sometimes two, at every node, and has twice the bloom it did last year. Wish I had pruned the wild ones I gather from on my neighbor's farm.

Check the benifits to the brain from elder. I'll have to get my computer fixed to send links, but Dr Oz had a segment on it and you can find the research by following links from there. Elder flower also has medicinal benifits. Dry some and keep it for when you need it.

I just read the posts on you folks making elderberry fritters.  They are blooming now in WI and I think I'll go out and harvest some wild flowers.  It sounds like they were big hits in many folks' families here.  Good memories to be made.  I've never had them, just read about them.

Anyone want to post their recipe for the elderberry fritters?

Yes, please do. 

And do you have to take the flowers off the little green stems before cooking with them?  I remember getting some icky green slime on some syrup that I made a couple of years ago.  I had to skim that off...

We used to just make a somewhat thinned pancake batter and dip the flower clusters in, using the stem as a handle.  The flowers were always left on as they are the main ingredient in the fritter.  When the battered flower head was lowered onto the hot buttered pan it spreads out and then cooks into a pancake-like fritter.  I'd then snip off the stem while the first side was cooking so it was out of the way for when it's flipped to finish cooking.  Then onto plates and drizzled with home made maple syrup.  Looking at my bushes outside it looks like it's just about time to make these again :)

Thank you GregMartin!  I will be out collecting tomorrow even if it's raining.  And we have neighbor made maple syrup or raw honey(within 20 miles) to boot.

In an earlier post 6/6 I said they were blooming then.  I will have to check and see if I was right then or right now.  I hope now...  I know the leaf and flower if I can see them up close.

Mine are blooming too. I've been clipping off the bloom on the ones I just started from cuttings over the winter. The deer have been clipping considerably more off.

There's an abandoned house nearby with elder all around it and one bush has much bigger flower-heads than any of the others I've seen. That's where I'm going for cuttings this winter.

 
That bush has grown since the house was abandoned so I'm sure it is a wild seedling but it looks pretty productive. The one that volunteered on my old compost bin got heavily pruned in the spring and it is way ahead of the others in forming berries but the heads are the same size as all the other wild ones around here.

 
The ribbon is on top of a ten foot pole to give scale. I'll be pruning it down for ease of harvest this winter.

I keep debating buying a named productive variety but once again we've run out of money before we've run out of month. Wyldewood is the most productive variety and it was collected from the wild not all that long ago so it's possible to get good production from wild bushes and, the way finances are going, unless someone wants to swap me a named variety it looks like that's where I'm going to have to go.

I've been wanting to try "etiolating" (scroll down to pictures here) and this looks like a good place to practice. If I put the tape on now, hopefully, it will be ready to put the air-layer on right after the berries get harvested.

Don't forget to dry some flowers for tea.

Hi greysmith,
Take some hardened branches - 2 yo - and stick them now in the dirt. Water them.
You'll get your own  elder for free .

Yes, as jdsfrance mentions, elderberries are as easy to start from cuttings as figs...maybe easier.  When I was hiking through the snow this winter I came across my Adams elderberry and noticed a branch had fallen onto it from a nearby tree.  This broke off a small branch from the Adams so I brought it into the house.  I cut it into 3 7" sections and put them in water.  When I noticed that root initials were forming I planted them into soil that I kept moist and all three easily rooted and sent out shoots.  It was a very easy way to share this plant with friends.

Wow!  Elderberries everywhere.  Such good and tasty foods,  for free!  Thank you all for posting.

Yes, I've started them from dormant wood cuttings and from root cuttings and they are very very easy to start. I just don't want to take cuttings till after I've harvested the berries. The etiolating is something I can do now that will get the branches ready to root for when I am ready to cut them, whether I air-layer them or just take cuttings it will hurry the rooting process.

I took a couple of feet of root last year when I was through harvesting berries and wrapped it around the inside of a pot and covered it with soil. It had shoots up pretty quick.I kept it in a blow-away greenhouse on the porch and it stayed green when I lost several things in there that I thought sure would have survived. It's way ahead of all the other cuttings I started over the winter. Whether I air-layer them or just take cuttings before they go dormant, this year I want to pot them and try to get them through the winter, like that, for a head start on next year. 

I put a Nitty Grit Dirt Band cd in the player and went looking for elderberry flowers this afternoon.  Found them fairly quickly amid a swarm of mosquitos.  When I got home I put them in the refrigerator and did some gardening.  About 2 hours later I went to get them and the cold had changed some of the flowers from cream color to brown.  I put those in the compost.  Anyway, we enjoyed the fritters so much I'll get one more picking later in the week.  I need to find out who the owners of the property are to see if I can dig a couple of the little side plants up to take home.  Thank you folks for your stories about fritters being so special.  It was enough encouragement for me to get the lead out and find and prepare them!

Any old cutting will do for a start. If you're taking flowers anyway, cut a flower head a few nodes further back and plant that. That root I was talking about had a sprout on it. No little feeder roots, just one big (finger sized) root going back to the main clump. The sprout died back to the ground when I potted it, but I kept it moist and in a couple of weeks bunches of new sprouts came up. I should have cut the root into smaller sections before planting. BTW if you do root cuttings lay them horizontal to sprout. I did some root cuttings and stuck them upright in cups with an end exposed. Some did sprout from that end but some came up from the middle or bottom and took a lot longer to reach the light. A lot of the regular cuttings sprouted from the exposed nodes and from the buried nodes too. The ones that got froze back because I put them out too soon sent up sprouts from lower down. Ones that I gave up on and dug up to replace had sprouts coming from the roots right at the bottom of the cutting. If I had waited most of them would have made it. Elder is easy.

Greysmith, I will do as you suggest to get the elderberries propagated.  But if I got permission to dig a few 4 ft. shrubs, wouldn't they produce berries faster?  I cut wildflowers along the roadside all the time.  In my ethical outlook, that seems ok to me.  But going and digging something up without permission, steps over my sense of right and wrong.  But, then, this spring a beautiful clump of two toned daylilies (admired them for over 10 years) were flattened/bulldozed and I would have maybe reconsidered my attitude... 

I am going to try that etolization with my big fig.  Just bought some electrical tape for my husband and I'm sure there will be enough for the fig too.

*wildflowers along the roadside  I cut a big bunch of yarrow and hung them up to dry.  I plan on making a tea to use on skin irritations and cuts.  We'll see how effective that is.

If you can get a shrub with a good root ball, yes it should give you a head start. The sprout on that root I dug was close to 6 ft tall, a tall stem with a cluster of leaves on top. I dug it because it was out away from the clump, but it just had the one root going back to the clump, no root ball, and the stem promptly died back to the root. I found the clump to big and dense to dig and shoots out away from it on runners without a good supporting root structure. I was trying to dig a plant but I would have saved myself a lot of work just taking cutting because that's what it amounted to, due to the growth pattern of elder. Maybe if you could find a seedling that would work. On the other hand you don't need such a head start because it grows so fast. I picked most of the bloom off to make the plants grow faster but some of the dormant cuttings I started this last winter already have berries on them. Start cuttings now, treat them right, and they should produce next year.

Yarrow is for cuts, use plantain for rashes.