Elder - easy to grow and productive

Elder flowers - open at the top and still closed at the bottom.

Often, when new gardeners get through the first years of vegetable gardening, they think about adding fruit to their backyard crops.  It's an excellent idea and fruit is quite easy to grow, as long as you're in an area with no animals or insects to spoil your efforts. If you are adding fruit, start off with some of the easy things, depending on your climate of course, like lemons, mandarins, oranges, passionfruit, strawberries, blueberries or elderberries. My selections for the two easiest fruits are strawberries and elderberries.  Strawberries can be grown in pots or in the ground and a few weeks after planting your first strawberry runners, you'll have delicious berries. Elderberry is a tree but it grows fast and doesn't have too many problems. Using either the berries or the flowers you can make a fermented, champagne-style white wine, a red wine, non-alcholic elderberry cordial, elderberry jelly, puddings, cakes, immune booster against flu and elder tea.  Woolworths sell elderflower cordial for eight dollars a bottle but you could make your own for about 50 cents.

Elderberries and flowers are highly nutritious and many people take elder drinks for their healing properties. However, elderberries should not be eaten raw and you should use only the flowers and the berries, no stems, leaves or bark. They can make some people sick. 

Elderberries are native to eastern North America and many parts of Europe. They are two separate species but they're so similar that the North American variety is thought to be a sub-species of the European one. Both species can be used in all the links in this post. There is a warning though. Given the right conditions, elder will send out suckers and you may have more plants than you know what to do with. Our own experience with it has been that it needs quite a bit of water and if it gets it, suckers will apprear. You have to be brutal. We just pull them out. It's an easy enough exercise and so far we've never had a problem with our main tree or any of the suckers.

I first came across elder when I found a small plant at our local organic food co-op. I'd heard about elder and knew the late John Seymour was a great fan of them, but I'd never seen it in Australia before.  I bought that little elder seedling, planted it and within two years it provided enough shade for our garden bench. Hanno and I still sit in the shade of the elder tree and for that reason alone it has been worth the price and the effort to grow and water it. Elders respond well to a high nitrogen feed a few times a year; comfrey tea is ideal. And as it grows, clip it back to keep it to a size that you can manage. It responds very well to pruning in early spring and will send out a lot of new growth, particularly if you give it a good nitrogen feed at the same time.

Elderberries forming.

Our elder tree is one of my favourite things in our back yard. I try to get others to grow it, and always have a couple of suckers here potted up and ready to give away. I think only my sister and one other person have taken up my offering, but I still try to spread the good news about that tree.  It's spring here so our elder is starting to flower. If history is any guide, the flowers will develop small berries and then they'll drop off. That's the down side of a warmer climate with elderberries - they like the cold and I'm guessing anywhere north of Brisbane they'll develop the flowers but not the berries. We have had a few winter berries but not enough to do anything with. If you're in a  colder climate though, you'll be able to use the flowers and the berries.

So far I've made elder flower cordial - and that was truly a delight in that it didn't taste of fruit and sugar, as most cordials do, it tasted more of flowery honey instead.  Using that cordial, I made elder ice cream. That too was delicious.

Overall, an elder tree will stand you in good stead as a shade tree or as a productive part of your garden. Christmas champagne made using elder flowers is a seasonal delight. I've included the River Cottage video link below. But champagne is just the start. It's worth experimenting with jams and relishes too and if you produce a basket of berries, try making wine.  It's an easy to grow tree and even if you only use it for shade, it's worth the effort.

Do you have elders growing in your garden?

River Cottage elder champagne video
Elderberry facts
Mother Earth News - elderberry
Mother Earth News - how to gather elderberries and recipes
Elderberry syrup for flu prevention