What zone are you in? Northern Missouri here, so zone 5b I believe, and I’ve found clumps of wild elderberries on our property…
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Something between 7-9. We have pretty dry summers here so that would be my only concern. We've only had 6mm of rain since the start of the year. But we've got the infrastructure in place to supplement water as needed. I'm looking into some companion planting options and maybe I'll put in an elderberry guild when the rain starts.
Good luck to you! I followed you so I can hopefully get to see your progress, and bee encouraged too. :)
How much rain do you get annually? Depending you may need to offer supplemental irrigation to get good fruit crop. Elders like lots of water as a general rule, but some varieties, at least here on the west coast and the ones that adapted to living in the rain shadow have much more drought tolerance. Depending if you are zone 7, 8 or 9 you'll have the best result if you look for genetics from similar zone and rainfall. Good luck!
We get around 750mm a year but we have a very dry summer with almost no rainfall at all so would need something fairly drought hardy. I'll see what I can find with others locally who are having success.
Oh interesting, that sounds similar to our climate here! Summer is our arid dry season as well.
So cool that you have wild elders growing on your land!! Do you know what kind they are? Are they the native black variety? What a gift! We are zone 7bish in southern Oregon. I love how adaptable and giving elder is!