Elders have captured my attention for years.

What attracts me most about this glorious plant is the strength I can feel emanating from this being.

Being medicinally rich, delicious, hardy and easy to propagate, I’m sold. These hardwood cuttings are from selected cultivars (wydewood and marge, pictured above) which are chosen for first year fruiting tendencies and high flower yield respectively. They’re ready for a new home.

Food Forest Champs

These represent another addition to the ever expanding diversity of our forest garden and permaculture nursery. As a potent immune boosting and antiviral ally, elder’s berries, leaves and flowers will yield important medicine in years to come.

When building our food forest, multi use plants are what we’re looking for. Elders fit this description perfectly.

Take, for example, this Bob Gordon variety from last year. We chose Bob Gordon because of its precocious nature, adaptability and high yields. It is a selection from a wild plant from Osceola Missouri.

We prefer species that exhibit qualities of adaptability and resiliency and have multiple uses. Elder is one such plant.

The first pic is where we have started with each year: an elder cutting. The second pic is 1 year of growth and this third pic is year 2 spring growth.

We got this variety from a neighbor’s yard. Presumably it is a wild elder. Last year we got a few bunches of berries from it and are hoping for a bigger yield this year!

Isn’t it cool to be able to produce such a beneficial plant from just cuttings!?!?! In years to come we hope to keep propagating these and some day offer cuttings of all of the varieties we have here on Homesteader’s Co-op. We believe such an amazing plant should be in every yard!

If you want to propagate your own, check out this very useful post we wrote last spring:

Easiest Way To Grow A Lot Of Elderberries | Incredibly Useful & Medicinal Shrub!

Green blessings!