Plant Profile: Goumi - Elaeagnus Multiflora - A Hardy, Vigorous, Berry Producing Shrub

I want to share some info about a fun plant that you may not have heard of before! I hadn't heard of the Goumi until I volunteered for a Permaculture homestead last year. The had several varieties of Goumi growing and they were already fruiting vigorously in May.

This beautiful Goumi shrub is only 5 years old. Can you believe it?!

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The Goumi prolifically produces clusters of delicious little berries.

They are both sour and sweet. Some varieties of Goumi are sweeter than others, some are more sour. I am pretty sure these berries pack a big dose of Vitamin C.

They plump up and get real juicy when ripe. The nice thing is they are really easy to harvest. You can either grab a cluster at a time by the stems and then de-stem later, or take the time to hold the stems or branches with one hand and then pick off the berries with another. You could sit on the ground in the shade of the shrub and pull hundreds of little berries off the tree. Many of the berries ripen at the same time, so it can be convenient to dedicated the time to harvest most of them at once, and then get the stragglers here and there a few times in successive harvests.

Belonging to the Elaeagnus family, the Goumi is related to Autumn Olive, Russian Olive, Silverberry and many others. The Goumi, as well as all members of the Elaeagnus family, are Nitrogen Fixing (N-fixers). If you haven't heard of nitrogen fixing before, it means that the plant can harvest nitrogen from the air and put it into the soil, creating a more fertile growing environment for itself and other plants.

This is a huge advantage for a gardener trying to improve soil fertility.

There are annual nitrogen fixers such as beans and peas and there are perennial nitrogen fixers such as Goumi. The nice thing about the Goumi being a perennial is that year after year, as the Goumi's roots grow larger and become more established it will fix larger and larger amounts of nitrogen into the soil, improving the health and vigor of plants under it's canopy and all around it's root zone. In the following picture you can see raspberry canes that totally engulfed this Goumi shrub in order to benefit from its nitrogen fixing abilities! Whereas the other trees and shrubs around it did not have raspberry canes jumping over to them.

This observation is totally anecdotal, but for me proved the amazing fertilizer harvesting power of this shrub. Wish I had a picture that was more zoomed out because it was pretty amazing :) The nice thing about it is there was a totally symbiotic relationship between the two plants in the same space. It made harvesting more interesting as you had to reach through one to harvest the other, but the tall raspberry canes provided a huge amount of shade for harvesting Goumis, and I really appreciated that in the hot spring weather.

The only real downside that I have found about the Goumis is that they have a long woody seed that are fairly chewy. If I am eating a small amount of Goumis I will either spit out the pit or chew it and swallow it with the Goumi depending on how I am feeling. But for any large amount of fruit to be consumed at once (such as preserves) you will want to take out the seeds. They wouldn't make an appetizing jam for example.

I found that a food mill (such as Foley food mill) works quite well at seperating the seeds from the juice. You will be left with a mash of seeds and pulp. We experimented with fermenting this mash and got a delicious tasting wine, even before aging. Then the chickens got the fermented mash and seeds once the fermentation was done, and they clucked up a storm!

The resulting juice lends itself well to jellies, sauces, fruit leather, freezing in ice cubes for flavoring food or drinks, mixed drinks, and I'm sure there are many other uses you can think of!

We also dehydrated some Goumis without processing them and they were not bad to eat a few at a time with the pit in them. We also put those whole dried Goumis into things like meatloaf and other baked dishes and they added some nice flavor. The pits didn't really get in the way of enjoying the meal experience because they were spread out with many other nice ingredients.

Another nice thing about the Goumis is that they are hardy down to zone 5, so it would take a pretty harsh winter to do them in. Up in North East Washington, not too far from Canada, they are doing just fine.

I highly recommend checking out this Goumi plant profile at Plants for a Future. While there I just learned that the Goumi is "capable of reducing the incidence of cancer and also as a means of halting or reversing the growth of cancers". Amazing!!

In general I highly recommend this website Plants for a Future for researching and learning about plants you want to grow in your garden. It's easy to search a plant in their database and you will likely get an amazing amount of facts and information about propagating and growing your favorite plants :)

Goumis can be propagated by cutting, layering or seed. You may want to just buy some Goumis from a nursery and get it going ASAP, but considering how vigorous they grow and quickly they produce (within just a few years) starting from seed is also a reasonable consideration.

Consider planting a Goumi in your garden this coming spring and you will have years of delicious and fun berries to come!

Wishing you a 2018 filled with abundance. I am grateful for this abundant harvest from last spring including the Goumi berries and the raspberries that engulfed it!