Over the garden fence: Elderberries are an overlooked fruit. What to do with them
When I worked at Penn State at the Horticultural Research Farm off of state Route 45, I would always take note of a large elderberry shrub growing at one corner of a barn where we stored and graded our potatoes. Each year it would produce many clusters of dark black berries, which either the birds enjoyed, or they just fell off onto the ground. One year I decided to harvest them and see if my good friend Jim Garthe, an ag engineer by training, could make some elderberry wine.
Blue (or black) elderberries grow in the wild over much of the United States and even up into Canada. The several kinds of elderberries all belong to the genus Sambucus. The red-fruited kinds are reported to be poisonous so I would avoid those. Wild elderberries fruit heavily, which is what I observed in the shrub at the Horticulture Farm. I considered that shrub wild but it may have been planted many years ago by people that lived in the adjacent farmhouse. People have been harvesting wild elderberries for wine, pie and jelly for a long time.
You will see that even the flower is edible if you dip it in fritter batter and fry it quickly to serve with syrup. It turns out like crisp lace and may even be good for you, since in Europe the flower is considered to have medicinal properties.
The plants are tall shrubs with many stems rising from the ground and outward in a fountain shape. Occasionally, a very old shrub turns into a gnarled small tree, but since elder wood is pithy and soft at the center, the tree shape is not very sturdy.
Harvest the fruit when it is very dark in color and the surface is covered with a dusty bloom. You can then strip the berries off the clusters of the many stems if you want it for pie. For jelly or wine, just cut the heaviest part of the stem then crush the fruit or heat it and pass it through the jelly bag. If you eat it before cooking you will find that it is a laxative and perhaps bitter, but that changes with heat.
The bushes can grow to be about 20 feet in height and will spread out, but you can cut back the oldest stems from time to time to control the size. I would suggest that you remove stems that have borne fruit for several years to make room for the younger growth. You will probably need a small hand saw or large loppers to cut out the stems.
The plants are almost entirely self-unfruitful, so you need to plant two plants.
For planting in the garden here are some named varieties: Adams — clusters and berries bigger than the wild type, ripens in early August; Johns — more vigorous plant than Adams but not as productive, ripens a few weeks later; Kent — this variety resembles Adams but ripens about ten days earlier; Nova — the large fruit ripens uniformly in the cluster, which is helpful. It is also reported that Nova is sweeter than many varieties and ripens early; York — produces the largest berry of all in heavy clusters. The plant is very large and productive, and it ripens late, after Adams.
If you find some good elderberries I wish you good luck with your elderberry, pies, jellies and wine.
Bill Lamont is a professor emeritus in the department of plant science at Penn State and can be reached by e-mail: wlamont@psu.edu.
