permaculture

[Rick Valley <bamboogrove@cmug.com>]

> From: Heide Hermary <heidehermary@pacificcoast.net>

> I am thinking of using the Northwestern native blue
>> elderberry for the scion.

This elder species is quite edible. I once made an excellent "champagne"
with the berries following Euell Gibbon's recipe; it tasted a bit like a
fino dry sherry only sparkling. And I've done elder fritters with the
flowers. The Eastern US native used to furnish us boys with a
proto-paintball game: the hollow stems made blow guns and the berries were
the ammo- good gory results! But elders are usually clonally propagated by
dormant wood cuttings; you want several branch nodes per cutting. If you can
get scionwood, you can just plant cuttings- hormones, bottom heat, humidity
are all factors you can play with for a higher succes rate, but it's hard to
miss if you can get a basal cutting. If you can find an abused, battered
root crown, you can divide it into many plants.

>> I know that the Bulluck brothers down in the San Juan islands grafted
>> named apples onto the native crabapple stock there, but those crabs were
>> themselves edible.

 The secret to eating these is to do as the natives did and dry them and
treat them as raisins. They're too small and vitamin rich to eat like you
would a golden delicious.

It ain't just the horticulture, that permaculture!
 
-Rick