welcome to our homestead being
self-sufficient means growing a lot of
what you need to survive and one of
those things is growing plants which are
medicinal in nature now there are a lot
of plants which are medicinal in nature
but today we're going to highlight the
elderberry we're going to talk about how
it grows and its health benefits let's
get started
[Music]
elderberries are amazing amazing plants
the berries are the thing we're going to
concentrate on today in the past people
have used bark in other parts of the
plant for medicinal purposes i think the
bark was used for a laxative but you
have to be careful with elderberry
plants for unripe berries the stems the
leaves things like that they contain
trace amounts of cyanide just like an
apple seed you're saying to me wait a
minute no apple seeds contain arsenic
actually that's not true i thought that
too but they contain traces of cyanide
also a tiny bit of a tiny trace of
arsenic but the husk around the seed
contains cyanide so let's talk about how
elderberry plants grow so first off you
can see that we've got two we've got a
little one over here that's not doing as
well as this beautiful plant right here
these plants are only a year and a half
old so you can see the vigorous growth
that elderberries actually put out it's
it's fairly amazing now these
elderberries are actually very easy to
grow
they do love a very rich soil so we are
going to be actually adding compost and
some composted leaves today to the base
around the plants now you can see on
this one the other ones have disappeared
we've added some mulched wood chips we
do that to try to keep the weed pressure
down because these elderberries don't
like the grasses and the weeds too much
so there are several different varieties
of elderberries and you really want to
get ones that are self-pollinating but
it's always best to have more than one
because even if they're self-pollinating
they can help and assist one another if
you have more than just that one plant
now it's recommended that you have your
elderberry plants planted six to ten
feet apart ours are eight feet apart so
we're in that range that is the best
spacing for them because they are such
vigorous growers they can get out of
hand pretty quick and i'll show you
another reason why that happens so on
this plant you can see the original
trunk from the elderberry
plant that we bought and you can see
it's within our mole cage here we have a
terrible mole problem
but that has done well but like other
berry plants kind of like raspberries
the root stock is where
your new shoots are going to come up
from and new shoots come up all the time
you can see over here outside
of
our our cage here all the way over to
the side of our mound we've got another
elderberry uh
plant coming out from the rootstock here
you can see our other plant the
originals which are doing very well
inside that mole cage that we built
we've got another one over here about a
foot and a half away and it's roughly
six feet tall so just be mindful of that
wherever you plant these they are going
to be
incredibly vigorous like i said and
start to grow very very fast
and they will get out of your growing
area like raspberries very fast and you
may have to prune them back and trim
them back back into the area of
containment that you want them so
additionally when you choose your
elderberry plants you want to choose the
ones that are of the sambucus negra
varieties
there's a lot of them but they have or
they contain the blackberries those
blackberries are the ones that are high
in vitamin c high in antioxidants and
those are the ones you can eat avoid the
ones with the red berries all together
and in fact when you're harvesting these
you want to get rid of and pick off the
green berries if there are any because
those do contain those cyanide
properties also so let's talk about
pruning with elderberries usually you
don't have to prune an elderberry at all
if you don't like but you can just start
pruning it after year three
for shape and anything before that you
don't really need to do because you want
all that energy to go down into those
roots
and create the strongest possible root
system that you can
so that
they grow for a long time to come so
we're going to add that compost that i
talked about earlier and
we're just going to add our raw compost
we don't have any
manure in this but if you're using a
manure compost make sure it's already
composted down and it's not hot at all
on top of our fully broken down compost
we also have some leaf mold compost now
that isn't fully broken down and the
reason i'm putting that on there is to
also help with water mitigation so just
like a wood chip which you can add also
we like to add
some partially composted leaves
now the flower heads that form on these
are where the berries form and they're
actually very very big this is actually
about half of what this flower head was
and this one plant
had i think six of these flower heads on
it so it takes a little bit to get a
decent amount of juice but
like i said the vigorous growth of these
is will give you that amount of berries
that you need for a decent amount of
elderberry syrup if you make that
in just a few years so this video isn't
necessarily about propagating these but
i'll give you a quick tip on propagating
it's super simple you can take a cutting
from an elderberry
trunk like this to four buds so one two
three four cut it at a 45 degree angle
about halfway down from the fourth one
we're gonna plant it in the ground
up until the second one so only the top
two are gonna be sticking out and it
will root actually very fast there's
some videos out there that will show
that and we will also make one in the
future now elderberries are fairly
drought resistant but if you can
irrigate them i would because like in
texas here we've had we haven't had rain
well it rained a tiny bit yesterday we
haven't rained in a few months so
elderberries are fairly shallow rooted
so
if you have really well draining soil
that moisture is going to leave pretty
quick and they're going to need to be
watered so if you can irrigate them do
it so these amazing little berries are
full of antioxidants which help remove
free radicals from your body that boosts
your immune system they're also super
high in vitamin c
which also helps boost your immune
system so this the juice from this a lot
of people make a syrup with it is
something people use for to combat the
flu a lot so it's also used to reduce
inflammation especially with like a
breathing sickness like a bronchitis
it'll reduce inflammation anywhere in
your body but it's especially helpful
for something like a chest cold or
something like that it also helps with
fever and headaches and joint pain and
also constipation so don't take too much
the recommended dosage for an elderberry
juice or syrup is just a tablespoon per
day unless you're sick and then they say
that you can take up to three and that's
for an adult dosage now today's video is
not about how to make that elderberry
syrup but a really quick recipe for you
or a quick idea of the recipe is to take
a slow cooker or crock pot take a couple
pounds of frozen
elderberries there and that freezing
will help break the cell walls of those
elderberries so they'll cook down
quicker and they'll release all of their
juices without having to really mash
them up too much
we'll put about a cup of water in the
bottom we're going to slow cook them for
several hours and then strain them
through a nut milk bag now make sure you
don't have any red or green berries
mixed in there with them get those out
first because they do contain that
cyanide although it doses that small
it's not really going to hurt you but it
could upset your stomach make you
nauseous and so on and so forth so
be safe and get those out of there ahead
of time now we've already done videos on
some other medicinal plants like garlic
we've shown you how to grow
harvest cure garlic so that is also a
really really powerful medicinal plant
that you can grow on your homestead and
additionally things like ginger turmeric
cloves echinacea thyme peppermint hisop
chamomile all of those are incredible
medicinal plants and a lot of them are
very interesting because they are
herbs that you would grow and cook with
anyway but they have amazing medicinal
properties also so i highly recommend
that if you want to be more
self-sufficient and get into
homesteading that you start planting
medicinal plants as well as plants for
food because they can help you out a lot
in a tough situation and as things get
more scarce nowadays
i think it's probably a really good
thing to do now i want you to go check
out this video right here which shows
you the ellen white method of how to
plant a tree which will get you a strong
vigorous beautiful tree faster than any
other method have a great day we love
you see you next time bye
you