Elderberry

Elderberry is the fruit crop for the spot where water stands in spring. Most berries demand drainage; elderberry thrives in low spots, along ditches, and at the edges of ponds where blueberries would rot and raspberries would sulk. If you have a wet corner of the garden that defeats other plants, elderberry may be the answer.

You need two varieties for a real crop. Elderberry flowers are technically self-fertile, but a planting with only one variety tends to produce scattered berries and empty clusters. Two different varieties planted within fifty feet of each other — Bob Gordon and York, Adams and Nova — change the yield completely. The bees move between them, and the clusters fill in dense and heavy. One shrub is ornamental; two shrubs are productive.

The berries themselves are not food until they are cooked. Raw elderberries contain sambunigrin, a compound that can cause nausea and stomach upset. Cooking denatures it — which is why elderberry syrup, jam, and pie are traditional and elderberry salad is not. Pick the clusters when the berries are fully dark and starting to soften, then strip them off the stems with a fork and cook them down the same day. The birds know when the berries are ripe before you do, and netting the shrubs a week before harvest is the difference between a full yield and watching the robins clean you out.

Elderberry suckers. Not gently, not occasionally — every spring, new canes come up from the roots in a widening circle around the original planting. This is how the plant spreads in the wild, and it will do the same in the garden unless you cut the suckers back to the ground each year. A single shrub left to its own habit can become a thicket ten feet across in three seasons. Annual mowing or pruning around the perimeter keeps it manageable.

The first real harvest comes in year two or three. The shrub grows vigorously the first season after planting, but the flowers and fruit come on older wood. A transplant set out in spring may bloom lightly the following June, but a full crop — the kind that fills a freezer bag or two — usually arrives in the third year. After that, an established planting tends to produce reliably for a decade or more with nothing more than annual sucker removal and occasional thinning of the oldest canes.