For dogs you need a secure fence.

glib:

Don't know what your experience has been with actually trying to use aronia berries, but I have had them here for about 15 years now, Viking variety, and they taste awful.

They are very productive after the bushes grow up, and I don't deny they may have their antioxidant health benefits, but you have to find a use for them so you can eat them despite their foul, astringent flavor. Last season the bushes were heavily loaded, and I made 3 1/2 gallons of pure juice from only 3 large bushes, which I subsequently froze. I have been using it by blending with 3/4 apple juice I pressed last fall, but, while they add a deep purple color, their influence on the apple juice flavor is negative.

I can't imagine making jelly or preserves from these things, since no one would eat it. I am not at all certain that your concept of planting bushes to enclose a dog is valid, but if it is, aronia is probably not the best choice if you want something that has culinary value.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Thanks. The bushes do not enclose a dog, rather they prevent them from getting in while being on a leash (if they are off leash I do not care). I could also put chicken wire right by the bushes...

but either way, the important thing is that jellyman says aronia berries are not good. I must admit my only experience with them is the juice one buys at Trader Joe, which is good if somewhat strongly flavored. I have to wonder if this is a generally held opinion. Cranberries too are much too tart to be palatable, but we sure end up buying and using lots of them.

On the other hand, blueberries give me the fruits and the fall red, missing only the spring white and adding a lot more birds...

glib:

Right, you are trying to exclude not include dogs, and I reversed that. I am sure you will find someone out there who will sing the praises of aronia, and all I can say is try some of them before you do a lot of planting.

Cranberries improve with the addition of sugar, but from what I have seen aronia does not, at least not much. I have also seen some favorable reports on the aronia juice sold by Trader Joe's, and wonder what is really in their stuff. The aronia berries I processed were fully ripe, and I did them in the steamer/juicer, which results in the addition of a little moisture but nothing else. You can drink it straight or diluted, but it is more like medicine than fruit juice.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

The Trader Joe's aronia juice tasted very brackish to me. Perhaps their batches are highly variable and all are not sampled by the company prior to sale.

My aronia berries (unknown cultivar) also are extremely astringent. I keep meaning to try throwing a few of them in smoothies for the health benefits. Amazingly enough, my 1.5 years old son loves them though. He went over to the bush last week to pick a "blueberry" and I let him eat one to see his face afterwards. He proceeding to gobble 10 before I stopped him. I've read that some of us lack the receptors on their tongues to effectively taste bitter flavors.

If you're looking to buy a bunch of aronia plants, Burnt Ridge is a good source. Their unnamed cultivars are large, vigorous (in full sun in my loamy clay), and inexpensive (the named cultivars I ordered were much smaller). At 3 foot spacing, you could have a light hedge in a little over a year and a dense hedge in 2 years.

I've also got a goumi bush (also an inexpensive, large, vigorous specimen from Burnt Ridge) and think they would make a nice hedge, but the aronia bushes with their dark green leaves, white flowers, and dark berries would be prettier. A staggered hedge might be nice with the light green foliage goumi between the aronia bushes.

djofnelson,

I think there is a lot of merit to the idea that some of us literally taste things differently.

That said, I think aronia does vary plant to plant and may depend on when they are picked or the weather.

Last summer around this time, I tasted fresh aronia for the first time at the Home Orchard Society Arboretum. They had 3 or 4 seedlings. All of the berries were jet black and bursting with juice to the extent that they'd weep it from where the stem detached and stain my fingers.

The berris from all of the plants were juicy and sweet. At least one of the 3 had little or no astringency (at least that I could detect after having eaten some astringent ones).

I had come in prepared to find the berries bitter, astringent, and thinking they would be more dry like a cranberry so my expectations were pretty low. But I enjoyed them. The flavor was perhaps a bit mild for my taste, but otherwise I could envision myself eating a couple handfuls per outing.

This year I went back to try them again and perhaps get some budwood from the best of the lot. Well, the season is about a month behind from last year for fruit in our area and the aronia was no exception.

This time the fruit ranged from red to black with the stages in between. All of the berries were quite astringent, and some or all were bitter as well. They also weren't juicy.

From that I concluded that either they become less astringent as they ripen, or that the growing conditions in a particular season may influence how astringent they are. From what I understand they hang on the bush for a very long time. If you haven't already you might try leaving them a month or so past seeming ripe and try them again.

I haven't tried the straight aronia juice from Trader Joes, I'll have to remember to look for it again.

What I do remember is having Aronia Juice Cocktail from Costco which I and my entire family compared favorably to Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Cocktail.

It was probably somewhere from 5-12% juice with a whole lot of sugar.

We love aronia berry bushes on our property! We eat everything we harvest! We harvest, freeze and then throw a cup every morning into our smoothie and bake them into buckles, muffins, etc. Once frozen, they sweeten up a bit and are great in any recipe. When we have more mature bushes and gallons and gallons, I will start creating juice concentrate.