"Fran Higham" wrote in message ...
"MDHJWH" wrote in message

Why is this a problem? (snip) Too
busy?
It only flowers at midnight on the new moon on the tird day of .....?

A combination of both of these plus weather/planting conditions.

As I said, my elder is in a dry spot which also happens to be in the middle
of a built up bed of rather scratchy bushes. The flowers are plentiful but
they do not ever seem to be uniformly in good condition when I get to them.
whether this is due to dryness or because of my timing, I've never been able
to determine.

According to the bods I purchased my new place from elderberries are
most prolific in colder climes. they should be kept moist in the
several months leading up to flowering and fed lots of seawead as
fertilizer.The later sounds odd to me as I can't imagine inland
Europeans fertilizing with seaweed for all those centuries they have
been making elderberry wine. Still it wouldn't do any harm.
The lack of uniform condition ,I'm told, can be overcome with freezing
the flowers until you have enough to make wine. A wee bit high tec for
permacultural correctness maybe ;~}

Ayn Marx