Growing My Way to Freedom #36: Aronia melanocarpa

Thanks for the information and description. I planted one too and had similar reaction to the berries taste before they were ripe. I never got to taste a fully ripe one though since the birds gobbled them up before I could! Next year I should try some netting to preserve a few berries for preserves :-).

-- If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it--John Irving

another edible! Nice.

Also called: Black Chokeberry
Ontario Source: Connon Nurseries 383 Dundas St East, Waterdown, ON L0R 2H0

-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a)

Tom, you are welcome and good luck getting some of those berries before the birds do.

Debbie: Yes, they are familiarly called black chokeberries, but doesn’t Aronia sound tastier? Ontario is part of the plant’s native range, Debbie and chokeberry thickets were part of the native Carolinian forests. Are you thinking of introducing them? : ) The cultivar I planted was Viking.

-- "To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves." M. Gandhi

I have a choke “cherry” bush (Prunus virginiana) – that the rabbits have eaten to the ground, twice.
I noticed last week that, now however, there are two little bushes instead of just one. That’s exciting.

I will probably keep my eyes open for an “Aronia” bush to add to the collection. :)
I have a lot of spaces to fill in amongst the trees.

-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a)

oh look… my native plant supplier carries it :D
LINK=

-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a)

Great minds think alike. What a wonderful resource that nursery is!

-- "To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves." M. Gandhi

it definitely is!!

-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a)

Those bushes grow wild here Robin.They are all over this part of Ontario.They make a nice tasting jam that I can remember eating as a kid.

-- Bon,Hastings,Ont.....zone 5a....Always room for one more

this video was just shared on Facebook:

interesting that is posted the day we talk about the chokeberry / choke cherry

-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a)

so now I’m on a roll:

-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a)

Bon, that is great to hear. The only thing better than growing food in your garden is foraging it from the wild. Next year, if we harvest enough berries to make jam, I will make you a jar. : )

Debbie, thank you for the two videos. I really enjoyed watching the first one. I wish I could have seen what they did with the berries after they mashed them. I have read that the Lakota people sometimes added chokeberries to pemmican. In the second video, the narrator says that the seeds are poisonous and need to be removed before eating the fruit. I believe this is inaccurate and that he is confusing the chokeberry (Aronia) with chokecherry (Prunus virginiana), a native plant that indeed has toxic pits. If anyone has reliable information that the seeds of the Aronia are indeed poisonous, please let me know the source of your information.

-- "To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves." M. Gandhi

I, too, was disappointed that the first video didn’t show the “what next”.
As for the poison I would have thought that cooking them would have had the poison seep out into the juice.
I don’t know the answer to your question—- yet.

-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a)

1. “or example, chokecherry has toxicity issues but chokeberry does not. ” LINK

2. “This plant should not be confused with chokecherry (Prunus virginiana), which is also a native American plant somewhat similar to aronia in appearance, but whose leaves, stems, and seeds contain toxic amounts of prussic acid (Trinklein, 2007).” LINK

-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a)

Thank you for the clarifying links, Debbie.

-- "To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves." M. Gandhi

Whew!? I was quite confused by these two plants until I saw MsDeb’s links. I used to gather wild
chokeberries and make chokeberry jelly. (years ago) I don’t know if I ever saw a chokecherry. (I hope not) The chokeberries I gathered grew wild along the old railroad bed. While we did not eat lots of the berries, I hope I didn’t use chokecherries by mistake!

-- 'To plant a Garden is to believe in Tomorrow'

I don’t think they look that much alike, Iris. With your keen appreciation for nature, I think you would be able to easily tell them apart. I have never noticed wild Chokeberry bushes growing around here but perhaps my two little bushes will be spread by birds and we will have chokeberries growing in our woods.

Did you ever mix the chokeberries with other types of berry when you made jelly or did you use just chokeberries?

-- "To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves." M. Gandhi

Already full of jams & jellies for a while I read that you had thoughts of combining Aronia & Elderberries for making wine. Did you ever accomplish that task?

I’ve got a freezer full of both berries and rather than making two separate batches of wine I too have wondered about combining the two super fruits into a super wine as well. However, while I am not a beginning vinter my lack of experience outside the boundaries of concord & strawberry wine I’d rather follow than lead so I do’t ruin the harvest.

If anyone has suggestions how to make a blended wine I’m ready to listen.

Peace

TG, so far my aronia harvest has been too small to make anything but I will post something next year if we decide to make wine with them. If you go ahead and do it with the fruit in your freezer, please let me know of your results.

-- "To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves." M. Gandhi

Several months ago I asked if anyone had a wine recipe for Elderberry/Aronia as a mix. Here’s the update.

I went ahead and used an Elderberry Wine recipe from the “Winemaker’s Recipe Handbook” by
Raymond Massaccesi. Because the berries were similar I just added Aronia “Chokeberries” and treated them the same as Elderberry. Remarkably the Aronia are very close in size, color, acidity & sweetness as the Elderberries few could tell the two wines apart at this stage. If my fermentation bottles were not different I would have to be sure my labels remained intact because I can’t tell the difference between the two.

With the amount of berries available I made:
3 Gallons of Elderberry & Chokeberry – Aronia
6 Liters of Elderberry,
6 Liters Aronia,

I save a liter of each wine in volumetric flasks so I can refill with wine not water. The long necks are great for watching darker wines finish. The wines were thin so to add body I added 1 pound of raisins to the 3 gallons and 1/2 pound to the 6L during the ferment along with some white oak chips. Though the wine has been clarifying nicely with racking I use a product called Isinglass which helps with faster and more thorough clear. Before bottling I will check final sugar and maybe sweeten a few bottles if so then I will stabilize those with Potassium Sorbate so they don’t restart bubbling and push my corks out.

More leftovers: With 3 quarts Elder & Aronia mix after filling my 3 gallon carboy, I also was making a gallon of grape with my first harvest of “non-concord” vines including Mt. Frontenac, Glenora, Red Candice & Thompson Seedless and others which may or not be producing yet. That means a gallon of Grape & gallon of Grape/Berry which from early indications will require aging, but be very nice.

Because of the drought last fall and because I cut my vines back heavy the previous fall my concord harvest was low. That was all converted it into juice which went quickly and a couple batches of jelly. Welch’s has nothing on home made grape juice. It simply can’t compare.

After a late frost, drought, Japanese beetles & squirrels my apple trees were a dismal sight. Besides eating a few while in the yard I only picked enough good apple for two pies. However, because they didn’t work hard the trees are full of buds this year. If it ever quits snowing the blossoms might open.

Same goes for my cherry shrubs and blueberries. They weren’t really ready last year, but I had zero cherry blooms due to frost and harvested a total of four blueberries. My dad never had luck with them on the farm and my patience for growing blueberries in my yard is wearing thin. I’ve got 7 or 8 bushes, 5 different types trying to find something that grows. My soil is without organic matter as top soil was scraped off when I bought my lot. I’ve been amending for 20 years, heavily in some areas, but need to acidify soil for sure. Recently I got a four-way meter; Light, Moisture, PH & Fertility. We shall see if I learn anything.

In the mean time I have started a gallon of each: White Grape from a box concentrate, Wheat just bottled – it will be a nice dry white wine, strawberry 17% ABV still settling. The last thing I did a week and a half ago was clean out the freezer so now have 3.5 gallons of Rhubarb mixed berry wine fermenting like crazy (Blueberries, Black Berries and Black Raspberries picked wild in northern WI a gift from a friend) and a few pounds of raspberries from a local grower I didn’t convert into jam.

Even though I couldn’t get my chair through snow for planting a potato on Good Friday right now I have a dozen tomato plants in the window sill with Sweet 100 the tallest at 10” and a couple dozen peppers of varying heat, but mostly Scotch Bonnet & Habanero I grow for a friends restaurant. He uses them in his Jamaican Jerk Sauce that is really become popular: The Harbor Bar & Marina, Hager City, WI on the Mississippi.

*I bought some 6 liter Pyrex flasks which are great for fermenting small batches. It allows 4 X 750ml + 3 X 375ml meaning I can sample every 6 months or so and have four bottles left when it’s time to drink!

PEACE!

TG, thank you very much for the detailed update. I will be able to refer to your “recipe” when we finally get an aronia harvest that is sufficient for making wine. the Rhubarb/berry wine sounds interesting too.

Good luck with your apple, cherry and berry harvest this year; I hope the weather cooperates for us.

-- "To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves." M. Gandhi

What an interesting idea to make wine from older frozen fruit. I might just have to try it. Do you find there is a “freezer burn” flavour at all?

-- jroot ....... Southern Ontario .......... grow zone 5A ...................."Gardening is an exercise in optimism." ....... . . Author Unknown