Anybody in the south growing named Elderberry varieties especially European varieties?
I’m very interested in Marge.
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I tried a couple varieties here in southern middle TN… York and Ranch…
They could not take my heat and humidity.
In years 3 and 4 eat up with foliar issues… no blooms no fruit. Yanked them about a month ago.
Think I will try relocating some wild elderberry bushes next time.
Very interesting. This was our first year with several named American varieties. They grew like crazy and made some fruit but several of the varieties had mite problems. Its the only plant I have ever seen where you can just stick an unrooted cutting in the ground and make a new plant.
I have learned that most commercial American Elderberries are cut to the ground each year. They grow back with fruit the next year. Plan to try that and hope that may help to manage insects and disease problems
Trying to determine if any of the European Elders will grow in my NC location. May be possible to grow them on a trellis like high density Apples with better yields.
About 7 years ago I got the property where my orchard is. At some point in the past, my guess at least 40 years ago, someone had grown a bunch of fruit on it. It had some sort of tasty clustering not from around here blackberry running rampant over a large part of it, old falling apart trellises and old muscadines, a few dead apple trees, a giant healthy celeste fig, and a bunch of elderberries. They don’t exactly look like they wild ones around here, and they are extremely vigorous. They taste terrible, though.
My york and ranch did well the first year… grew… bloomed… produced some fruit… large berries… 2-3 times larger than wild here.
The next spring… wet spring… they got the funk… and went down hill… no blooms no fruit… this spring same thing even though I cut them back to just stumps.
Just did not work here.