Thank you for more info on the elder gathering.  What you are trying to get through my stubbornness is that I probably would use less energy and be as successful doing the cuttings as opposed to digging a plant without a root ball.  And you don't know what's going on under the soil until you get digging.  I understand.  Maybe I can do both.  :0)

Also grateful for more info on yarrow.  I have never used the yarrow but I have used the plantain for nettle burn.  HATE NETTLES!  I wonder if they have investigated using nettle chemicals as some kind of pain reliever.  Initially they hurt bad, I know, but for the next 24 to 48 hours they do strange things to the nerves where you get stung.  Must be some kind of good application if it would be researched.

Don't hate nettles. They have more protein than spinach. Blanching removes the sting. They make a great frittata. They also make a very pleasant tea. Nettle root has some of the same properties and ginseng: plantanalog of testosterone.

Musillid, we have nettles over 6 ft. high.  I have been stung SO MANY times over the last couple of years.  I steamed some this spring for 15 minutes and ate them.  After about 20 minutes I got un uncomfortable feeling in my throat.  So no more nettle leaves for me.  I may try the root at some point but I thank you for the additional information!

Hi greenbud,
As for most vegies ( cabbages, ... ) , you should use only the last 4 centimeters - so just the youngest leaves.
Nettles sting is good for blood pressure.
For this reason, most of the time I remove them with the hands (no gloves) ... Now, where is my fakir bed ? :)

jdsfrance, I think I would rather lose 20 lbs. to reduce my blood pressure that go through the stinging and then the weird nerve stuff for a day or two.  The plantain really reduces or eliminates the pain but doesn't stop the after affect nerve problems.  I hear that honeybee stings can be helpful to the immune system.  Haven't been stung by a honeybee in years but last year I got stung about 10 to 15 times by German yellow jackets.  Finally had to break down and call an exterminator...

Do you grow pomagranites?

I made some elderberry tea from the flower and added a little honey.  It was pleasant and if get more flowers I'll use a little more flower to increase the strength.  After you drink it it leaves just a slight aftertaste of the fragrance of elderberry.  I have 6 cuttings in the ground and found maybe 15 small shrubs next to a 6ft. mother plant. The folks that do the planting have been generous with rocks that they clear so I'll ask if I can dig up a couple and fill in the holes with dirt.  Also got three cuttings of a pretty pink shrub rose, I don't know the name.  A good day!

Greysmith,  I got cuttings and planted them back about a month ago.  They are rooting but today I got permission to dig up some of the 3 to 5 ft. shrubs.  I am happy. 

With etiolation, if I wrap the electrical tape around the 1" diameter stem and leave it throughout the winter in dormancy (in basement) can I then separate and cut it off from the trunk of the tree? 


Are you harvesting berries now?  I wonder if this ebola virus gets into the populace whether elderberry would be helpful or hurtful.  I doubt if they are doing research on natural remedies...

The etiolation comment was about my fig tree.

While clearing the area behind my greenhouse I found an elderberry growing, so because of you guys I left it and cleared around it. I guess it too is contagious. Wives,kids,plants the things we will do.

I'm going to start harvesting elderberries tomorrow. Bought a hair pick to strip the berries. Some are already harvested by birds, and many are still not ripe. These are huge clusters of berries. I have seen some pretty large wild elderberry clusters, but the selected varieties are much larger. Not sure what to do with them, I'd like to make some wine, but for now I will probably make syrup as I don't have glass jugs or airlocks. I used to have a nice pressure cooker, wish I had that now for jelly. I need to get these things, I have too many berries for just syrup. Maybe I can freeze them until I figure it out.

We have a nice clump of nettles growing next to one of my pawpaws. They seem to have improved the growth of the tree and other plants near it. I have enjoyed some nettle greens this year, added some to eggs. Occasionally I brush against them forgetting I'm next to them, hurts for a short while, and I agree, it must have some benefit for pain relief. I would think maybe it might be good for arthritis. I wasn't aware it had a testosterone like chemical in the roots.

Mike in Hanover, VA

The berries on this bush (and the other wild ones around here) are just starting to ripen. You can see a couple of clusters turning purple up at the top. It doesn't show in the picture but I have the "etiolating" going for about a dozen cuttings from this bush.

 

The big bush on my old compost bin has been producing for weeks already and is almost played out. I have close to 4 gal. of de-stemmed berries in the freezer already. Stems are about half of what you get off the bush, and then the juice is only about a quarter of what's left so you need to pick a lot.

If you freeze the berries while they are on the stem it makes them a lot easier to get off the stem. Then pour them in a ziplock bag and put them back in the freezer till you have enough to make it worth cooking down and canning.

I wasn't watching close enough and got a lot of deer damage to my young elder bushes. It's taught me a lesson for when I start putting figs in ground. I've started spraying them down with pepper, but I should have been doing that right from the start so the deer didn't develop a taste for them. It's funny because I don't see any deer damage on any of the wild elder around. My big bush, that I took the cuttings from for the little ones is maybe 50 ft. from little ones that have had every leaf stripped off and they haven't taken the first leaf off of it.

Seeing the wild berries starting to get ripe inspired me to make a scouting trip to a thicket I have permission to harvest. It is in the "way back" cow pasture and requires an expedition. So, I got there and it was "Oops! I only brought two buckets". Elder ripens on the older wood first and these were some old bushes.

 
I couldn't get any of these in the picture. I'll need to go back with a ladder. That's a bush on a mound with blackberry brambles and stinging nettle under it. I gathered from bushes down in the ditches, crawling in along cow trails. I'd fill my two gallon bucket then clip the florets off the bigger stems into the five gallon bucket, to get them to pack tighter, then press them in. I filled the big bucket that way.

It took over night to freeze them. then when I started destemming, in my usual way, I could see that it was just taking too long. I wouldn't get them done before I'd have more ripe ones to gather.

Commercial growers use a tumbler to destem. I bought this wire mesh waste basket for a $1.50 at Dollar General, put it into the two gallon bucket, and I could just rattle and rub the frozen stems around in it and all the berries would drop off and fall through the mesh.

 

It took about 98% of the stems off in minutes. I saw another basket with a much finer mesh, one the berries won't go through, at another store. I'm going back for it and see if it won't do to sift all the really fine pieces of stem through. It would probably be good for sifting perlite too.

I'm going to try a float too. Neither the stems nor the berries float but, I think, if you put them in enough water so they can move freely the fine stems will settle to the bottom and you can scoop the berries off with a strainer. I don't want to try that till I'm ready to start cooking them down because if you put the berries back in the freezer wet they freeze together into a brick that won't pour into the pan. Not a big deal, it just makes them harder to handle when you start cooking, and that's already hard enough. You drop a brick of berries into a pot of hot juice, and have it splash all over the kitchen, just once, and you learn that berries, like camels, shouldn't be bricked.

Anyway, forget your hair pick, this is the quick and easy way to get elderberries off the stem.

Tom, I like your basket idea. The hair pick worked well, but sometimes berries would get stuck in the combs. I separated the berries and gently flushed them with water a number of times, pouring off the debris and bugs. I'd say I removed the majority of stems. I then let them dry for a while on newspaper before transferring to freezer bags. They were dry enough that they didn't brick up. I really have a lot more to harvest, I was too busy the other day to do much. I know many people like to freeze before destemming, and i like the idea of processing large amounts quickly. I do want to wash them first, but I will give this a try.

Mike in Hanover, VA

Mike, 

    One word: pie

Tom, 

    I take big garbage bags with me and clip the berry clusters right  into the bag. When the bag is full, I pull the next bag out of my pocket. I take them all home to shell the berries off.

I might take a bag to dump the berries into at the truck, but, it wouldn't hold up in the thicket. I wasn't kidding about crawling down cow trails through brambles. The cows break a lot of branches that would snag what the brambles miss. These adventures into the wilds is why I'm planting my own thicket... a close to home, well mowed, and not thick thicket.

It had been three days so I went back, with a ladder, to get the berries I'd missed, and, any that had ripened since. Found a mess. The cattle had done a lot more damage.

Elder shades out other plants and that thicket is bramble covered with honeysuckle and cat-brier where it isn't elder. So the easiest way for cows to get through is to trample the elder. They tunnel between but where there is elder they lay waste to it. Lots of berries trampled in the dirt. And, clusters of bare stems higher up where the ripe berries had been shaken off. It was a crying shame.



I found a couple of stems with big clusters of berries and did the etiolating wrap on them.

  That's about a foot of wrapping. I'm not going to mail them so I can take a big cutting and go for a lot of rooting area. Don't know if I can get them past the cows though. Here you can see that they are the last stems standing from a much bigger bush.

  Lot of cuttings going to waste there. They are so easy to start I'm tempted to get carried away starting them. If they were the named and proven productive varieties I would, but wild ones are a dime a dozen. Still... those are big clusters. I might take my loppers next time I go and take cuttings from the stumps. Just stick them in the ground along my tree line and see if they grow. Couldn't hurt.

I still did manage to get a lot of berries (in a bag). Even with all the damage there are a lot left. And, I can see bushes further back, that the cows haven't gotten to, just covered with green berries. I'll wait till they're ripe before I cut a path into them... if the cows don't cut one first.

I'm about due for a big cooking and canning session.

I went back to the big patch in the cow pasture for the last time, it's played out. I cut the branches I'd had etiolating. They'd had the tape and foil on them for almost 3 weeks and when I took it off I could see little if any difference in the bark where it had been. The knobs are, maybe, a little bigger.

 
 
I went ahead and put them into dirt as cuttings. I have been starting a lot of elder cuttings so we'll see how these do in comparison. And, I have some still on the bush that I started earlier at the old house. So, we'll be able to see how leaving them longer works. And, some of those are on older wood so we can see if that makes a difference too.

I tried the float trick to get stems out of the berries. It didn't work at all. I tried floating some before freezing to get dead leaves and bugs out. I've read about that but it didn't work very well either. The leaves and bugs got tangled in the stems and wouldn't come out. After freezing they were wet and wouldn't float. Cleaning the berries is getting to be a real problem. I'm handling to many to be drying them on newspaper between steps.

I'm seeing where I'm losing a lot to birds. Bird damage is obvious because they take all the ones from the top of the cluster where they can reach them easiest. If I were buying elder I'd get the varieties that have the clusters hang down rather than the ones that remain upright.

I tried putting plastic grocery bags over some clusters to see if that would protect them from birds. That didn't work either. The berries that touch the plastic at the top of the cluster get cooked by the sun. I feel like I'm getting beat up by the learning curve.

Spraying the bushes with a pepper solution does seem to help with the deer damage. Help, but not stop it completely. But, I planted out a sour cherry that I have been carefully nursing along and didn't think to spray it. The woods here are full of pin cherries and black cherries, I didn't think they'd bother a cherry. They stripped every leaf off overnight. I'm developing a taste for venison.