When and How to Prune Elderberries

Elderberry (Sambucus spp.) should be pruned as part of your regular garden maintenance routine, just like other fruit-bearing trees and shrubs, to encourage abundant berry production while supporting overall health.

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When growing these plants for their berries, particularly if you hope to be rewarded with a good harvest, you’ll need to know how to care for them properly to ensure plentiful fruit growth for you and for the local wildlife.

As the popularity of immune-supportive herbal remedies increases, so does the demand for healing plants like elderberries.

As a result, more farms are adopting the species as a profitable hedgerow, and gardeners include them frequently today in native plant and medicinal gardens.

Not much goes into pruning elder trees – the task is simple, particularly if ample space is available for the plants to spread and grow. Let’s take a look at what’s involved. Here’s everything we’ll cover up ahead:

In the first years of growing my own S. mexicana, I assumed it wouldn’t need much pruning in our garden because of the trees I observed on our local trail.

But, because our garden receives a bit more irrigation than the trees on the trail do, mine grew larger and more quickly in cultivation than those growing in the wild nearby.

To maintain a canopy size that did not overshade garden beds and to gather juicy berries throughout the summer, I quickly learned that pruning was an important aspect of this tree’s maintenance in our landscape.

You may notice dead branches now and then, broken in strong wind, or maybe an animal has