Elderberries

Before we moved here, our only exposure to them had been via Monty Python’s Holy Grail (“Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of….”). They were on Jacke & Toensmeier’s “Top 100 Forest Gardening” plants, so I purchased 4 babies in 1-gallon pots.

We planted the elderberries on 4 April 2011.

After the mulching, it was a bit hard to even see these small things. There’s one behind me and to my left (E), and a goumi—another berry-bearing bush—to my immediate left (G). Remember this pair!

This is what they looked like on 8 Nov 2011, seven months in the ground.

This is what they looked like on 7 June 2012—not even summer yet (three of them in this picture). Monsters! in the ground just 14 months.

They continued to grow during the summer, and the goumis grew even faster.

29 Sept 2012

A word about goumi, another entry on J&T's top-100 list: They produce edible berries, which we hope the birds will eat instead of the elderberries, blueberries, jostaberries, marionberries, cherries, etc. But their chief use in the forest garden is fixing atmospheric nitrogen into the soil. Although they were planted at the same time as the elderberries, they came in 6” x 2” “tubes” and thus took longer to establish themselves. More on goumi when they start to bear berries—next year, I hope.

Back to the elderberries, which are sambucus nigra (ripe berries are black). They grow to 20’ or more, but at that height they’d block our view of the orchard from the deck, so I’ll have to keep hacking them down every winter.

In 2011, the plants put out some berries, but we were too busy with other stuff to do anything with them. In 2012, though, as they shot to 8’, then 9’, then 10’ high, they put out huge, and huge numbers, of blossoms that begged for attention.

All the white and yellow blossoms will turn into berry clusters.

As the berries ripened, I started harvesting. They don’t ripen at the same time,

so I could clip off enough clusters to fill a heaping five-gallon bucket

and then go back and do it again several days later. I think I harvested five times altogether.

Pulling berries off the clusters is fast and fun. Place fingers on either side of a suitable stem, pull along (up) the stem, and the berries pop right off, if they’re ripe enough.

Still, lots of clusters + tiny berries = an hour to fill the pot.

Then the berries go onto the rangetop (in a different pot, with a non-stick bottom). Cook them at low heat, add sweetener. Beth experimented with sugar, honey, sucanat, and stevia, with results preferred in that order (Beth says "stevia was gross"). When cooked down for a shorter time, the yield is a yummy, runny syrup that suddenly made vanilla frozen yogurt worth eating. When cooked longer, the yield is a yummy jam that doesn't last long around here. Neither is too sweet, and both are flavorful.

Which makes us wonder: What is wrong with smelling of elderberries?!