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  • From: Alexander Brands <abb7@Lehigh.EDU>
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] aronia
  • Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 13:43:21 -0400


From: "Michele Stanton" <6ducks@gmail.com>
To: "'North American Fruit Explorers'" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [NAFEX] aronia
Message-ID: <002101cb4446$57bf1090$073d31b0$@com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Does anyone harvest Aronia berries? Yesterday I harvested a few handfuls of fruit from Aronia melanocarpa
'Autumn Magic', although frankly it's dry and a little bit astringent.

What are anyone else's experiences with this plant and its fruit?

One other note: this plant is a rabbit magnet. The only way I can keep
rabbits from

Keeping it 'pruned' is to keep it netted J

I planted a 'Nero' Aronia in 2005. The rabbits pruned it for me the first year, I put a guard around it the next year, but no trouble since then (without a guard). It's about 5 feet tall, and I got 6 quarts of berries this year. Fresh, they taste awful, but I like the jelly I've made from the berries, it has kind of a wine taste to me, maybe it's the little bit of astringency in the jelly.

Its leaves get damaged from some kind of small sucking insect, can't remember the name. They're about the size of aphids, but they clearly are not aphids. They hang around the underside of the leaves, not in groups, and they carry their wings folded flat across their backs. if I don;t do anything about them, all the leaves get a bunch of little brown spots, I guess where the bugs have stuck their suckers in, and the fall color show is spoiled. If I remember early in the season, I can hose off the underside of the leaves a couple times, and that takes care of it for the most part. If the bush was a little fuller, it would make a good edible substitute for the potentially troublesome burning bush.

One thing I like about Aronia is that the birds leave the berries alone.

They are also easy to start from cuttings....I successfully rooted 3 out of 3 cuttings this year. I only need two, if someone wants to trade for the third one!

Alex


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