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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jun 19, 2021 13:32:43 GMT -6
I'm fairly sure it's the hog pen that's causing them to grow so fast. Refer to page one, post #11 and #12 to see how I side dressed them with mulch, wheat straw, and chicken litter. I've grown a few elderberries in years past but have never had acceleration like this. Several of them are 8' feet tall or taller now.
I just planted them in February of 2020. They were just cuttings, pushed into bare soil. They just idled all last summer, to the point I thought they might take years to produce. Then, this May, they just took off! I have photos of them a month ago and they were only 3' feet tall. Right now, it looks like the tropics out there because of the runaway foliage. It's really hard to imagine this many blossoms without seeing them in person. I hope the plants can support the weight when the berries come on.Not all of them are blooming at the same rate. Some are more foliage than fruit right now.I planted these in a checkerboard pattern on 8' feet centers. At first, I thought that was crazy far apart. Now, I'm wondering if that was nearly far enough?It's hard to tell in these photos because there is no reference to their height nearby, but these plants are about 7' or 8' feet tall by my best guess. I've got blossoms galore right now. If they all set fruit, I'll soon be covered up in fresh berries.These are the same plants a month ago. This photo was taken May 6th, 2021. The goose in the foreground makes a good reference to height. Now, they are all taller than I am, and loaded with blossoms. It's really incredible how fast they took off!
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jun 20, 2021 14:08:21 GMT -6
It looks like you’re going to be making a lot of jelly, syrup, and cordial. Wow!
Have you heard the expression about planting landscape plants: “The first year they sleep; the second year, creep; third year, leap”? Your plants seem to have gone from sleeping to leaping all in one year.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jun 21, 2021 2:02:23 GMT -6
Elderberries are an amazing and very giving plant. In years past, I've harvested other elderberry plants as many as 5 times in one season by stripping them clean of their blossoms and berries. Then, they'd start the production cycle over and I'd strip them totally clean again, for a total of 5 harvests in a single season. (Kind of like Alfalfa hay in a good year.)
I don't think I'd like doing that every year, as it might be too hard on the plants. It was just an experiment to see what was possible and what their hidden potential might actually be. I was absolutely amazed by them.Last year, in February of 2020, these were just finger diameter cuttings poked into the ground, hoping they'd eventually take root.This year, they've shot up from 6' to 8' feet ,some even 10' feet high and are loaded with blossoms that are looking like they will set fruit anytime now. Last year, they tried to set fruit at about 2' feet, but heavy rains stripped the blossom heads, causing such sporadic germination that I didn't even bother harvesting any of them.
Tomorrow morning's weather forecast is calling for a 90% chance of heavy rains. So, we will have to wait to see what becomes of all of these fresh blossoms.
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Post by macmex on Jun 21, 2021 5:57:58 GMT -6
When I was a teen and trapped in the winter I would actually cut elderberry for stakes (just for one particular type of set). At the end of the season I'd pull my trap and just stick that stake back in the bank of the creek. It invariably rooted and turned into a full fledged elderberry bush that following summer. We had a lot of red twig dogwood which made sturdier stakes. Red Twig Dogwood would also root and grow from trap stakes. I sure I've even seen maple do this.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jun 21, 2021 9:26:00 GMT -6
I think that's probably true of many different woody plants if you catch them just right in early Spring. My Great granddad told me of a post oak that he chopped down with an ax and drove into the ground to fix fence one Spring. He said that it sprouted leaves, but died that summer in the heat.
I think elderberry is probably easier to grow than not to grow. It takes root readily from most cuttings taken during late winter (Mid-to-Late-February). It sort of reminds me of Forsythia in that regard.
Your trapping story reminds me that not all elderberry cuttings are created equal. I have one very small elderberry bush along the creek bank that I pushed into the soil several months before any other cutting. It was still summer and out of my lack of patience for waiting for winter to arrive, I took a single cutting and placed it in a spot right beside my footbridge, hoping it would take root there and grow.
(It didn't die). That's about all I can say about it. That one little bush is almost three years old and has never gotten any taller than knee-high. It has also never flowered. I suppose that just goes to prove that for everything there is a time and a season. Apparently, summer is not the season for taking cuttings to be started with fruit production in mind.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 20, 2021 19:59:16 GMT -6
It won't be much longer now, the berries seem to have had a good germination rate. Last year, high winds and heavy rains stripped the blooms off until I didn't get a single good buch of berries from the whole lot.
From the looks of these berry clusters, I ought to start getting ripe fruit in about 30 more days.They usually get ripe in late July, but everything is about a month late this year.Let's hope frost is also a month late, or else some of these bossoms might not make to the table as ripe berries.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 21, 2021 6:22:41 GMT -6
Have you ever heard of or tried elderflower pancakes? I’ve never had them but remember reading about them once.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 21, 2021 6:28:13 GMT -6
Chrysanthimum,
I've never heard of elderflower pancakes before now. I certainly have enough elderflower to experiment with though. I will have to look into that. Thanks!
While on the subject of things I've never tried before; Colleen, from Hawaii, sent me a very interesting video about sprouting tree seeds of so many varieties I could never name them all here. I can't grow most of them in my climate, but you guys in Texas might benefit from a few of them. If I lived farther South, I'd probably be out there this morning, filing, soaking, and planting seeds. Here's the video:
I've watched this video twice so far, just because this guy has so much enthusiasm about what he's doing out there.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 24, 2021 6:13:03 GMT -6
That is a fun video. I hadn’t heard of a bunch of what he mentions, and he omitted a few that I thought he’d include (olive, tamarind) unless I just don’t remember since there were so many covered so quickly.
We have a large loquat tree in our backyard, and it has produced a couple heavy crops of loquats (heavy enough that the squirrels actually let us get some). The fruits are tiny, and the pits are large, but I’ve made jam, jelly, and barbecue sauce in the past. I thought we had lost the tree this year because of the freeze. It has evergreen leaves, and it looked all right at first, but then it started turning brown and just kept going and going till the entire thing looked dead. It stayed that way for quite a while, then a tiny bit of green started at the bottom branches. Eventually it has filled out and greened up just about all over. I’m kind of amazed that it lived while a nearby cherry died. (The loquat and cherry are planted too close to one another, and an arborist told us we needed to choose one or the other. We had been pruning but hadn’t cut one down. Now the Lord appears to have made the choice for us.) The next time the loquat bears fruit I plan to try to sprout some seeds. (Others that are high on my list are citrus, pomegranate, and olives, but the trees I want to grow seeds from all need time to mature before they’ll bear fruit for us.)
One interesting note about papaya seeds is that they make a nice black peppercorn substitute. I dried some years ago (from a storebought papaya) and just recently put some of them in a batch of pickles.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 30, 2021 15:15:41 GMT -6
First Elderberries of the Season. My youngest son and I harvested 30 pounds of elderberries this morning. By 9:00 am it was 81 degrees with 79% humidity. We worked outside until about 11:00 am, by that time it was already 90 degrees with 60% humidity. The heat index had already reached 100 degrees. Sweat was dripping in our eyes until we could no longer see what we were doing. We didn't get anywhere near done picking, we just called it quits and came back inside. It's now a little past 4:00 pm and we're still working on them inside the house where it's a lot cooler. It's 98 degrees outside right now, with 47% humidity. The heat index is 108 degrees. We've sweated through two changes of clothing already and the day is still young. What a nasty, nasty, nasty, day! I just had to take a break to sit down for a while to do a breathing treatment. We'll be back at it in a few minutes, probably cooking berries down into syrup until the cows come home.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 31, 2021 11:03:13 GMT -6
I was thinking of this thread this morning as I was finishing up watering my garden, and my eyes were stinging from all the sweat. My plants are needing more water these days, and this is the time of year when watering is more of a chore than I would like it to be. Elderberry syrup sounds delightful, but the heat you’re enduring does not. I started a new thread in the general board about a radio program I just heard with some tips about heat exhaustion and cooling off. I thought I’d post a link here. seedsavingnetwork.proboards.com/thread/578/tips-cooling-off
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 2, 2021 20:34:40 GMT -6
Chrysathemum,
Thanks, for posting those heat exhaustion tips. we might need them this summer! It has been brutal out there!
It was a lot cooler here today. God provided us a much needed cool front that blew in Saturday evening, putting our high temperatures in the 85 degree range. It was actually quite enjoayable harvesting the berries this morning while temperatures were still in the low 70s.
We de-stemmed 19 pounds of berries today and harvested 11 pounds more for tomorrow. So far, that makes 41 pounds of berries that we've harvested over the last few days. We're starting to get a substantial amount of berries stacked up in the freezer awaiting the syrup pot.
This is an 18 quart nonreactive stainless steel stock pot that is brim full of destemmed elderberries to be frozen until we get the chance to process the berries into syrup later.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 6, 2021 13:54:24 GMT -6
Making Elderberry Syrup From Scratch Ratio of 3:2:1 3 juice, 2 sugar, 1 lemon
Note 1: (if 3,2,1 is a bit too sweet) try adding more lemon at a ratio of 3:2:2 3 juice, 2 sugar, 2 lemons. Note 2: Don't skimp on the sugar though, as this acts as a much needed preservative. If using bottled lemon juice; the juice of 5 large lemons= about one cup of juice. The juice of one medium lemon equals about 3 Tablespoons of bottled Realemon.
#1. Place freshly harvested elderberries into a thick-bottomed, non-reactive pot. (Do not use aluminum). Add just enough water to cover the berries, and bring to a rapid boil. (About a 3:1 ratio of berries to water).
#2. After the berries have come to a rapid boil, reduce heat to low and simmer the berries for 30 minutes, watching carefully so the pot never boils dry or boils over. (Simlar to cooking beans, Berries will swell before boiling, raising the level inside the pot). Please take that into account when selecting the right size pot or your stove might become a gooey purple mess!
#3. After simmering the berries for 30 minutes, remove the pot to a sink full of cold water to reduce the temperature enough to handle berries by hand, but still quite hot.
#4. Line a colander with muslin. Place the colander over a large pot. Pour your berries over the muslin to strain out the juice. Wrap the muslin into a tight ball and hand squeeze as hard as you can until all the berry juice is removed.
#5. Measure out your berry juice, return it to the non-reactive pot. Reheat the juice until hot enough to dissolve sugar but do not boil this time. (About 180 degrees).
#6. Add 2 cups of granulated sugar per every 3 cups of berry juice.
#7. Add the juice of 1 lemon per every 3 cups of berry juice. Stir until sugar is dissolved. (See note above about using lemon to increase tartness).
#8. Add 1 teaspoon of citric acid per every 8 cups of elderberry syrup. Stir in the citric acid until well dissolved. This not only adds beneficial vitamin C, but also raises the acidity, helping to increase the shelf life of the finished product.
#9. Ladle the syrup into sterilized canning jars, leaving 1/2" inch of headspace at the top of each jar.
#10. Wipe the lip of each jar clean of any spilled syrup.
#11. Place a sterilized flat on top of each cleaned canning jar, center it, holding it in place with your fingertip, and place a screw-on band on each jar. Tighten the bands fingertip tight to allow gasses to escape during the hot water bath process.
#12. Place the jars into a large hot water bath pot, making sure the hot water covers the lids well. Boil the jars for 10 minutes, allowing extra time for altitudes over 1,000 feet above sea level. Important: Timing of hot water bath does not start until the jars are all in place and the water is boiling again.
#13. After 10 minutes of boiling, let jars settle for 5 minutes. Then, remove the jars from the hot water bath, being careful not to tip any jars, as this might allow the hot, gooey, liquid inside to seep between the lid and the top of the jar, ruining your seal.
#14. Place jars on a clean bath towel draped over a tabletop, and allow them to sit undisturbed for 10 to 12 hours. You will hear a 'pop' sound as each jar seals while cooling off.
Store your elderberry syrup in a cool, dry, dark, place for up to a year.
Enjoy!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 9, 2021 20:32:04 GMT -6
I've got 80 pounds of elderberries harvested and frozen so far. Of those, I have 4 pounds boiled down into juice that is not processed into syrup yet.
I have 37 pounds from the 80 pounds, destemmed and ready to be dehydrated. So, I've got about 39 more pounds to go and the destemming portion will be done.
I've probably got about 1/3 of the berry patch harvested so far. Most of what I have left out there are still green at this point, but I've been getting 10 to 20 pounds of ripened berries that are ready to be harvested every other day.
I harvested about 50 pounds of tomatoes this evening and about 15 pounds of okra. Busy, busy, busy! I'm tired.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 10, 2021 22:31:24 GMT -6
We canned 15 jars of finished elderberry syrup today; twelve 8-ounce jars, and three 16-ounce jars. Plus we destemmed another 14 pounds of berries, making our destemmed total 51 pounds, and our harvested total 80 pounds.
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