Sea buckthorn is one of the most nutritionally valuable berries growing in Finland. Its bright orange berries contain exceptionally high levels of vitamin C and fatty acids, making it highly valued both as food and as a raw material for health products. However, sea buckthorn is not the easiest berry to pick, which makes it all the more valuable.

Sea buckthorn typically grows in coastal areas and open locations where the soil is sandy and well-draining. It grows as a shrub, and its branches are often thorny, making harvesting challenging. This is one reason why sea buckthorn is not utilized as widely as many other berries, despite its considerable nutritional value.

Picking sea buckthorn requires patience and the right technique. Many harvesters use methods where the berries are removed from the branches after freezing, for example, but hand-picking is still a common approach. For this reason, sea buckthorn harvesting is not the quickest possible, but it can be extremely rewarding when considering the berry’s value and potential uses.

Thanks to its nutritional value, sea buckthorn is widely used in the production of juices, oils, and dietary supplements. The fatty acids it contains are rare in berries, making it particularly interesting from a health perspective. However, utilizing sea buckthorn often requires processing, as its flavor is strong and somewhat tart.

In preservation, sea buckthorn behaves differently than many other berries. Its high oil content affects both texture and shelf life, which is why proper methods are especially important.

Although harvesting sea buckthorn is more challenging than picking blueberries or lingonberries, for example, it offers the opportunity to utilize a berry whose nutritional value and applications are exceptionally broad. When the right technique and understanding of growing conditions are combined with harvesting, sea buckthorn becomes one of the most interesting wild berries.