How to Grow Sea buckthorn

Hippophae rhamnoides · Also called: Seaberry, Sandthorn, Sanddorn, Oblepikha, Chharma, Tsermang, Argousier

A dense silvery-grey thicket of sea buckthorn shrubs on sandy ground.

Photo: Denis Barthel, CC BY-SA 3.0 (Wikimedia Commons)

Sea buckthorn grows where almost nothing else will: sand dunes, river gravel, mine spoil, cold high ground down to forty degrees below freezing. It does this because it makes its own nitrogen, with bacteria living in its roots, which also means it leaves the ground better than it found it. Vast areas of China have been planted with it to hold eroding soil, and the berries harvested off them have become a real industry. The berry itself carries more vitamin C than most fruit in this library, and an oil from the pulp and the seed that sells for a great deal. It is also, honestly, one of the most awkward crops here to pick: the berries sit tight against thorny branches, burst at a touch, and have no stalk to hold. Anybody planning to grow it should understand how it is actually harvested before planting a single bush.

Growing Sea buckthorn, Stage by Stage

1. Get the land ready — Poor, sandy, sunny and dry. It asks for nothing better.
2. Plant sexed bushes, not seed — The single most important decision in the whole crop.
3. Weed, water and keep the suckers down — Very little care, and one job that never stops.
4. Prune for picking, not for shape — You will be cutting the fruiting wood off, so plan for it.
5. Watch for trouble — A wilt that kills whole bushes, and very little else.
6. Harvest by cutting branches, and freeze them — This is not a fruit you pick. Read this before you plant.
7. Keep it frozen, and sell to a processor — Almost nobody eats this raw. Find the buyer first.

Common Problems & Troubleshooting

If you see: Healthy mature bushes that flower and never carry a single berry.

It likely means: Almost certainly no male bush, or not enough of them, or the males are downwind of the females.

Do this: Check that you have male bushes at all, since seedling plantings are often all one sex by accident.

If you see: A crop that cannot be got off the bushes fast enough, with burst berries and torn hands.

It likely means: It is being picked as though it were an ordinary berry. Sea buckthorn has no stalk, bursts at a touch and sits among thorns.

Do this: Cut whole fruiting branches off instead of picking berry by berry.

If you see: A planting that has closed into an impassable thorny thicket with no rows left.

It likely means: The suckers were not kept down. This shrub spreads sideways from the roots and will fill any space you leave it.

Do this: Cut or dig out suckers between the rows every single year, without missing one.

If you see: Whole bushes, or one side of a bush, suddenly wilting and dying in summer.

It likely means: A wilt disease. It is the most serious disease of this crop and there is no cure for an affected bush.

Do this: Dig out and burn affected bushes, roots and all, rather than leaving them among the healthy ones.

If you see: Harvested berries that have collapsed into a sour orange mush before reaching the buyer.

It likely means: They were allowed to thaw, or were never frozen. A thawed sea buckthorn berry lasts hours.

Do this: Keep the berries frozen from the field to the factory, with no gap.

If you see: Bushes yellowing, thinning and dying back, particularly in low ground or after a wet season.

It likely means: Wet feet, or shade. This is a plant of dunes and river gravel and it tolerates neither.

Do this: Check the drainage first, since waterlogging is by far the commonest cause.

Yield & Market Value

Growing the crop is only part of the job. The last part is knowing what a normal harvest looks like where you are, and knowing what your sea buckthorn is worth before you agree a price with anybody.

Remember It This Way

If you forget every other page of this guide, keep these lines. They are the whole crop, in order, short enough to carry in your head.

Male and female are separate bushes. No male, no berries.
One male for every six to eight females, on the windward side.
Buy sexed plants. A seedling hides its sex for four years.
Full sun and sharp drainage. Shade and wet both kill it.
Do not feed nitrogen. It makes its own.
Cut the suckers every year or it becomes a thicket.
Keep the bushes low and open enough to reach into.
Do not pick the berries. Cut the branches.
Freeze them, then knock the berries off hard.
Keep them frozen to the factory door.

Test Yourself: Identification

What does a stand of it look like?

What do the leaves look like?

What does the crop look like on the branch?

Honest Limits of This Guide

Timings here are given by season and by the age of the bush rather than in named months, because sea buckthorn is grown in both hemispheres. Count from your own seasons.
The harvesting method described here — cutting whole fruiting branches and freezing them — is how most of the world's crop is actually taken off, and this guide describes it plainly because a grower who expects to pick berries by hand will be badly surprised in year four.
Sea buckthorn is divided into several subspecies that differ greatly in thorniness, berry size and oil content. Yield and ease of picking both depend heavily on which one you have, and a figure from one region can mislead badly in another.
There is no photograph here of branches being cut, of berries being knocked off frozen, or of a male bush in flower, because usable pictures of that work are not available under a licence this library can use.
No varieties are named here. Thornless and low-thorn selections exist and are worth asking a local nursery about, since thorniness is most of what decides whether this crop can be worked.
This crop is grown at scale for erosion control as well as for fruit, and the two purposes want different management. This guide covers growing it for the berry.
No chemical treatments are named here. The berries are eaten and pressed for oil used on skin, and what is permitted differs by country and by buyer.

Sources

GBIF Backbone Taxonomy species-match record for Hippophae rhamnoides L. — Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Copenhagen (source)
EPPO Global Database — Hippophae rhamnoides (EPPO code HIORH) — European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO), Paris (source)
Hippophae rhamnoides — CABI Compendium datasheet — CABI, Wallingford (source)
FAO guidance on establishing and managing hardy fruit and berry plantings — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome (source)
FAO guidance on post-harvest handling of soft fruit for processing — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome (source)

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