Anything like Tempranillo or Malbec?
Going to use these late season aronia to add to some apple cider. @39thparallel and I always come up with more projects.
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Does aronia lose any astringency after freezing or perhaps harvested past peak ripeness (assuming the deer or other critters dont eat it by then)?
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Not many folks know this, but Aronia berry bushes can be grafted with pears, and they produce in literally 1 to 3 years. They do this in Russia to speed up tasting/testing new varieties. The grafts of pear do not last for a long time, perhaps 3-5 years, but you get to taste the pears much sooner than grafting to normal pear rootstock. I grafted a couple of Russian pears to aronia last year, and they grew well and made it through my winter (-38C) fine, but did not flower this spring. The Aronia cultivar is Viking, but I understand this is part mountain ash as well as aronia. But you have many pear varieties, so for fun you might want to graft some to aronia next spring and see your results.
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I’ve got some pears grafted to aronia but they have not fruited yet. Aronia as rootstock . Mentioned you in the thread above using cotton easter.
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Yeah, me too. My Shipova that I grafted to aronia have fruited though.
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i had one i got from cricket hill but it languished and died. got 6 varieties on a reg. mtn. ash that are growing like crazy. mostly grafted 2 years ago. maybe see some fruit next year hopefully. have stacyville , nova, summer crisp , patten, bartlett and another i forgot to tag. i may take a aronia sucker next spring and graft a different pear on it.
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I’ve made wine and jelly with aronia berries. They lose all of the astringency when cooked for jelly or juice extraction.
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i feed my harvest to my flock of chickens, it vastly improves egg quality. the hens love them fresh and like them dried. i planted 5 more bushes this year.
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i did the same as i still have some frozen from last year. i read awhile back that they are good for deworming as well.
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i didn’t know about the deworming effects, good to know.
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ive only seen it mentioned once so take it with a grain of salt.
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dried aronia are fairly palatable, ive got a cup of them that was left in my truck for a month or two and they dried up like raisins, I still snack on them…
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Going to be a good wild harvest here this year, been snacking on them a bit…my 2 and 4 year old even grab a handful occasionally. Decent sugar content.
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what if i was to buy 500 lbs. from you, what would be your price per pound? my plan is to make chicken feed additive to sell to backyard chicken keepers. meaning i could buy less than prefect berries that you would not sell to someone planning for human consumption.
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those the Iroquois beauty dwaff ones? mine are 10 and 12ft tall.
They are just the wild type growing in my lightly managed meadow in and amongst the wild blueberries, willows, cranberries, winter berry and swamp roses. The meadow was bush hogged 5 or 6 years ago.
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Ive never seen them wild up here and neither has anyone else ive talked to. ive only seen 1 wild black elder here as well. plenty of wild red ones though.
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do you have a recipe or process instructions? Sounds like an interesting concept…