 Welcome to the Spring Fever Garden Forums where we connect you the gardener with the experts at North Dakota State University. My name's Tom Cobb and I'm an extension horticulturist in the Department of Plant Sciences and I'm joined by Scott Swanson who's an electronic media specialist in the Department of Aeroculture Communications. This is the third of our four Spring Fever Garden Forums and tonight our theme is fruits and vegetables. Now the format that we use tonight is the one that we always use. We start with about a 20 minute presentation and then we have about 10 to 15 minutes of questions and we really do invite your questions. They really add a lot to the presentation. Keep your questions on the topic. So let's get started with a presentation on the number one fruit crop in North Dakota. So what are we talking about? Is it strawberries? Apples? It's aronia. Aronia. That's unbelievable and I've never heard of it. But aronia is supposedly easy to grow and it is a beautiful plant. And here to share with us your expertise on growing this crop is Cathy Weederhold. Cathy's been the manager of the two-and-a-half acre Northern Hardy Fruit Evaluation Project at the Carrington Research Extension Center since 2006. This orchard is one of the coolest places in North Dakota. It has 10 kinds of fruits and Cathy loves all of them. So Cathy, welcome to the forums. Thank you, Tom. Thank you. And welcome everybody. It's good to see, I guess, see you all again. And so yeah, we'll talk about aronia. And you know that I think they are one of the easiest plants to grow. So that hence my title. So here we go. Well, first of all, you kind of have to look and see where you are in North Dakota. Carrington's in that center, right? We're in the Drift Prairie and really that's probably considered some of our best soil. Of course, the valley, we won't talk about the valley. That's the best soil, right? But that's kind of clay. It can stay kind of wet. The cateau is not too bad for growing stuff either. The Missouri Plateau, we'll look at that for just a moment. So here's where the problem is. If there is a problem, are your soil conditions? And this goes for pretty much every plant you can try. And if you've tried to plant stuff and it's really hard for you, well, you probably know about those problems already. But most of all, our soil pH is quite high, seven and a half to nine. And that's pretty much the whole state of North Dakota. So it's hard to beat that. In the upper right hand corner is a map and the red is showing where the saltiest soils are. And those salts could be calcium salts. They could be magnesium salts. But they really kind of do a number on the roots of your plant. So that will kind of limit what you can grow also. And then finally, the overall limit is rainfall, right? But we can make a change to that. We can do irrigation, but that has, you know, that means your water has to be good. So so anyway, so we do have limitations on things you you can grow. So in general, Aronia, or they are also called black chokeberry and they are used for commercial fruit. They were mainly developed in Eastern Europe. You know, well, we can talk about this, but developed in Eastern Europe and then later reintroduced to the US. It was the great plantsman, Ivan Mitterin, who who developed these these cultivars that we use for fruit production. He crossed wild American Aronia. They took Aronia plants to Russia. So he crossed those wild American Aronia plants with Sorbus and, you know, Sorbus as mountain ash. And there are different kinds of Sorbus. If you get catalogs, there's something called ship of a, I think they might be in the shape of a pear. They're a small fruit, but but anyway, Sorbus is a fruiting plant. And so was Aronia. And when you cross them, you can get a Sorb Aronia. And then when you cross them again to another Aronia, then you got these Aronia that we're using for fruit production called Aronia Mitterinia. That's how they were referred to. So yeah, there's 75 percent Aronia, 25 percent Sorbus. So it's kind of interesting. And I've seen pictures of when they do the crosses and the leaves, the leaves, you know, are kind of funky. So so just some little information for the scientists out there. Most Aronia are tetraploids for copies of your chromosome. Humans are diploids. We have two copies of our chromosome. But Aronia are tetraploids and they are apomic dick. This means that they do not need to be pollinated to have fruit and to have viable seeds. So it's it's asexual reproduction by seed. So even if you had had buds, flower buds, and you covered that part of your plant with a bag, you will get fruit on there. It may not be as much fruit if pollination happens, but you will definitely get fruit. And you know, Juneberry are the same way. So that means that it's very hard to breed those two plants. We don't really have breeding of Juneberries and not much for breeding of Aronia. So the varieties that you may have heard of and are quite available are Viking, Mackenzie, Galachanka. They're nearly identical when they've done genetic studies on them. They're they're quite alike, even though they have different names. They're all the fruit tastes alike. I I don't think there's one person on the planet that could differentiate one fruit from one plant, what kind of plant. There is one that is a little different and it's called Nero, N-E-R-O, Nero. You know, I don't know. I sometimes think I taste a slight bitterness to it, but really it produces fruit just like everything else and same size and all. So Aronia is popular in the world, not so much in the United States, but Eastern Europe and Russia, which you would expect because that's where Ivan Mitrin developed it. They've been growing it since the 40s and 50s. And actually one thing to know is that Ukraine was actually the biggest producer of Aronia and other fruits, too, like currants. But when the big nuclear disaster happened, all that soil was contaminated in the area and no one would even want to buy fruit from that area. So Poland took over. Poland said, ah, here's our opportunity. And they became the leader in fruit production in Europe. So in Poland, about 15,000 acres, making over 55,000 tons of fruit. And they export it quite reasonably, which makes it hard for us to, you know, people to get a market here in the US. In the US, Iowa seems to grow the most. They have like 1200 acres. And then the rest of the country has another 1200 acres, so 2400 acres altogether. And in North Dakota, I was surprised to see there was an increase. From 2017, we had about 88 acres. And in 2020, 208 acres, the market is just really tough. You kind of have to find your own way. You know, making your own products. It's it's it's been really hard. And people have tried, goodness knows, people have really tried to make a market with Aronia. And I guess it's just easier to buy it from Poland, which is too bad. But if you would like to grow fresh Aronia in your in your yard, you can easily do so. You know, if your soil conditions are correct. So, you know, it's hardy to zone three. And I don't know if you know, but there's been a new USDA map about every 10 or 12 years. They update it. And all of North Dakota now is pretty much in zone four, both both for A and for B. So that's kind of sort of nice. But anyway, just you need average soil conditions not too high. We do get a little iron chlorosis in ours. And I do know someone by Devil's Lake. He's one of our extension agents. He's had a really tough time with Aronia and they have finally died because they had so much chlorosis. So that that's too bad. So I mean, the only thing you can do is try and see what happens. So this picture is Aronia that is ripe. And you can see kind of in the middle that there are small reddish berries. And, you know, we just see those and it's not exactly sure why they happen. And I've talked to people from around the country or the Midwest and they see them to, you know, it's probably just that the plant doesn't have enough resources sometimes to really finish out those berries. So you'll see them. But, you know, you can screen them out and they don't really have too much of an effect in the end. But all right, to grow Aronia, you I'm going to guess that you will normally get a potted plant. That's pretty much how they most people will get them from from a greenhouse. A potted plant. So you can you can plant that plant at the level they are growing right in the pot or because it's a shrub, you can plant it slightly deeper. You know, for trees, we really want to keep those main main order roots. We want to keep those right at the surface. But shrubs can kind of they can go a little deeper because, you know, they can add a little roots on. And so so up to you right at the surface or slightly deeper. And then you're going to mulch around there in the in the end. So so anyway, you want to trim or break up your roots, which is a very, very good advice for any shrub or any tree that you plant. I mean, physically, take a little saw like we have pruning saws. Right. I take a cheap one. And you can saw off that outer inch of soil around the pot because you when you take the pot off, you're going to see roots going in a circle around that around the edge and just saw those roots right off or you can take some kind of an implement and break them up, spread them out. But you want to break up that circling and then planted in a hole that is as deep as it needs to be, not not really deeper. And then because you want, you know, have some have it be solid at the bottom. And then you want to have you want to have dug and then loosen the soil in an outward direction because then those roots can go outward and, you know, for a shrub, even though your pot may be about 10 or 12 inches deep of soil, in the end, the roots of your plant are going to be in that top six inches. So that's really where you need to loosen up. And then water your plant that first year, you know, deeply and less frequently, we talk about and want to make sure it stays moist, but not too wet. And then mulch, mulch, mulch, mulch, about three inches of wood chips or some other kind of material. So so do that. And then you should start getting fruit in your third year. You know, if the plant is looking green and healthy, you don't probably really have to fertilize. I have rarely fertilized the aronia at Carrington. We have about four percent organic matter, what you would consider to be a nice, dark garden soil. So it's really up to you whether you do or not. Over fertilizing makes a lot of leaves, makes a lot of shoots and not a lot of fruit. So you want to be careful about that. And really a young plant, if you don't feel like you're getting much growth on there, a young plant, you would only give about, I would say, a quarter to a third cup of 10, 10, 10. That's pretty, that's kind of an average for, you know, a fertilizer. Only do a quarter cup to a third cup per plant. And that would be an early spring. But in general, I think you're not going to have to fertilize. So, you know, just just take it, take it as a comms, I guess. So in general, the growth habit of aronia are is a non-aggressive suckering from the crown. These are pictures from when the aronia were younger, but you can see they have spread out, but they are not taking over that whole area. And sometimes some shoots do come out of there and I've cut them off just to keep them tidy for mowing and stuff. But yeah, they're not really aggressive. And then use, use your renewal pruning methods. You know, after about four or five years, cut out the biggest branches, cut out any branches that grow across the center, any that grow out near the ground. You just want to keep the best ones. Yeah, so that's OK. Aronia flowering, it's going to happen in like mid-May to the second week of June. It's the last, it's the last fruit to flower. And let's see here. And you can see them flowering here in these pictures. It's a nice white umbil of flowers. They smell when you have several of them. You can actually smell them. I think they smell like dandelions. And it's not a not an unpleasant smell. It's I don't know if it's super pleasant, but it's not unpleasant like Juneberries. They're they're unpleasant. Yeah, they're going to bloom. And then I do not see very many bees, certainly not many honey bees in in Aronia. So perhaps they don't have much for nectar, but I see a lot of flies. And then I will see some native bees, but a lot of flies and hover flies. So kind of our standard North Dakota pollinators nowadays. One time in in 2015, we did have some freeze damage. If it froze May 19th, pretty cold. I think it was about 17 or 18 degrees Fahrenheit. And then when the flowers open the next day, you know, and then and this is probably several weeks later when the little fruits are starting. You can see that we did have damage, but that was one year out of all these years. So, you know, it's a possibility. And then pests. We have pear slug soft flies on the left. They eat on the top side of the leaf on the right side. We have lily spugs and those eat on the bottom side of the leaf. They kind of cause a stippling that you'll see on the top side. And they say you can like wash these things off with a jet of water. I don't have water in the orchard. I do use a spinosid or maybe a pyrethroid that I have. And I'll just spray them probably once in the summer. And, you know, you don't have to get rid of every single insect on your plants. You know, they have a lot of leaves. They have a lot of leaves, even if you see the leaves being eaten. There's a lot of leaves out there. So when you start to see a real problem, that's when you really need to bring out an insecticide or something like that. But anyway, and then our last insect is this. I think it's a cherry fruit worm. Somebody told me about that. And I see them sometimes. I'm seeing more of something recently. And I think it's a cherry fruit worm, but I'm a little confused. The berries will sometimes be dry inside, but I cannot see an entry point or an exit point. So I'm not sure what's going on there. I hope to find out some more information on that. So so just to tell you that it takes about a month when the when the fruit starts to turn color until you actually picking it. I've looked at several years of my pictures. I take way too many pictures of the orchard. But on the very left hand side, that is the beginning of variation. You can that is that when they the fruit starts to turn color and swell. So on the upper part of that left hand picture, you can see some green berries yet. And then on the bottom, you can see some are red and actually some are swelled. So that's the beginning of a variation. And that's probably around the fifth of August to the tenth of August. And then on the right hand side, the berries are swelled, but they are not black color. You can see one black berry and that's how they need to look. So it takes, you know, they kind of hang in there for about 10 days or so at this red color. And then finally, in the end, this this picture we saw before. And this is about three to four weeks after the fruit first started turning color. You're going to you're going to have this dark blue color. They're going to kind of have a whitish haze on the on the berries. They're very dark colored. And the best way to tell if they are ripe is to taste them. And, you know, Aronia do not taste great when they are raw. And so you taste them and you think these are the worst thing I've ever tried and you taste them again a few days later. And you think these are still the worst thing I've ever tried. And then a few days later, you might think, well, this is interesting. Are they as bad as I thought they were? And then probably within another three to five days. Then finally, the fruit is going to be juicy and it's going to be way better tasting, but it's still going to be a stringent. It's going to dry out your throat and dry out the back of your mouth. But that is that is ripe for Aronia, juicy, kind of sweet and a stringent. And you can get rid of. I wouldn't say getting rid of is too strong of a way to think about it, but you can reduce your astringency by freezing them. Almost everyone who uses Aronia freezes them first, freezes the berries. And then if you put them into something, if you put them into a banana bread, if you put them into oatmeal, if you make a smoothie out of them, if you make them into ice cream or something, the protein from those foods actually bind the tannins that are in the Aronia. And it's the tannins that are causing the dryness in your in your mouth. So those proteins bind it and they kind of remove it from the whole system. And you'll find these are a very mild fruit. They don't have a lot of acidity. They're probably the most healthy fruit that you can eat. They have way higher levels of the purple compounds. You can see how black they are. They have way higher levels of the purple compounds than any other fruit. So they are actually better for you than blueberries or blackberries or things like that. So they're kind of cool. And then harvesting. OK, I guess I could have gone on harvesting is in late August to early September. And I generally wear gloves. I learned in this early time that your fingers will just get completely coated with with the juice from this berry because it doesn't have a little release point. You know, like when an apple is ripe, you pick it and twist it. And then it comes off when it's ready. Aronia will never do that. And neither will June berries. Maybe you can see on the picture, there's a little hole at the top of the berry. And that's where the stem pulled out. And that's eventually what gets all over your hands. So and your clothes, your arms, your face. So you I really like to wear gloves when I when I pick Aronia. You know, you probably can't see this. And it's not very important. I just wanted to show you that they are very productive. They're super, super productive. And production has gone up over time. And I want to highlight years 2018 and 2021. 370 and 320 pounds of fruit from let me see that it would be 16 shrubs. That's just 16 shrubs. That's a lot. And there's four plants of each of these. So Nero has four plants, Viking has four plants, seedling and select. Each have four plants. So just look at that. A hundred, a hundred pounds from the four plants. That's really too much. The fruit, it's not very good on a year like that. It is it struggles to get sweet. They stay small and so you really don't want a lot of fruit. But I'm going to tell you, it's impossible to stop it. Aronia is just the most productive fruit there is. And it's impossible to stop it. And you're just going to have to be disappointed with the quality of your fruit that year. And, you know, they do seem to go on and off. And I kind of see that with cherries, too, one year high, one year kind of low. You probably could moderate that with with more irrigation. And I have I started irrigating in 2021 because the crop was so big and we had a drought and really, really needed the water. So the fruit that year were really terrible with between the drought and the fruit load, the fruit were not good. They were much, much better in 2022 and 2023. So, you know, kind of that moderate amount of fruit per plant. So you'll have enough to share with the neighbors. That's for sure. You only need one plant since they don't need to be pollinated. But up to you if you want a couple, you never know. The birds don't really share them with you, which is kind of nice because because they're smart. So, yeah, today when I was looking, I was looking at like the quantity of fruit that Poland produces. And I came up with this this website, Aronia Eggert from Poland. They produce a lot of plants to sell and there they deal in Miro Aronia. But they do, they make a lot of products here. I once read that Aronia was the second favorite ice cream flavor in Poland. I don't know, but there's juices, there's liqueurs, there's chocolate covered Aronias, which I'm sure are dried Aronias. And then they cover them Aronia honey, Aronia jam, Aronia wine. We have Aronia wine in North Dakota and it's pretty good. It's pretty good. So there you are, all kind of products you can make from Aronia. And, you know, please don't be afraid of it. I've people from Minnesota have said, oh, this is a terrible fruit. But I think, you know, if you just try it from the plant and you don't try to do anything with it, that might be your only opinion of it. But if you can mix it with something that has protein in it, you'll be really surprised. So, all right, that is Aronia here and I'm ready for questions. OK, Keith, here we go. All right. You said Aronia is choked berry, black choked berry. Berry, yes. That's right. Now there's someone from Saskatchewan who's wondering, does choked berry take the same as their native choked cherry? They do not taste alike. The choked cherry is very almondy and a little more sprightly. The Aronia are quite mild. You know, like almost no acidity and they don't taste alike. No. Yeah, they're different families. The Aronia have little tiny seeds like an apple, not the single pit like a cherry. Yeah, but they both make you choke. Yeah. How about what's the size of an Aronia berry? Is it like a gooseberry or a currant or like a gooseberry? Like a gooseberry. OK, yeah. OK, now this person's already inspired by your talk, Cathy. And they say you just have limited space in their landscape. Would Aronia be the fruit that you would grow? If it was the only fruit I had. Yeah, only a little space. If you had only a little space, actually, there is Iroquois beauty. And there are some other landscaping varieties like low mound, moundscaping, something like that. They actually produce edible fruit. I would actually go for Iroquois beauty, a smaller plant. Maybe it gets three feet tall. I think it's from the Morton Arboretum and it's in catalogs. And it's a nice small plant and it would not overproduce for you. I mean, it might, but for its size, it wouldn't. And then you get the benefit of the beauty like the great fall color and the flowers. Yep. But some fruit. I don't know. Personally, I would not plant Aronia if I just had a little space because that I'm sorry. Well, how healthy you'd be, though. You got a good point about that. You could convince me and it's easy. That's the other nice thing. It's easy. So it doesn't take a lot of work. No. Now, how about let's see here. Can this person wants to make a whole windbreak of Aronia? Can we buy it, bare-root plants? I think you can, but I'm not sure where. How about Mackenzie from the Plant Materials Center? The soil conservation. That's what I was just thinking. The Plant Materials Center developed Mackenzie and the soil conservation districts have them. If you're, I'm not sure how homeowners get stuff from soil conservation districts. I don't know if you're only allowed to have the excess or they can order for you. That I'm not clear on. Well, you can get it if you pay for it. So maybe it sounds like Mackenzie is a good way to go because you said that it's just, I mean, it would be much more affordable than a liking. And you say they're identifiable. They're just as good and they actually produce a lot. And I think they're really a little bit better. They were selected because they grow more. They have a lot more suckers from the crown and they get really thick. And I find the fruit just a little bit juicier, a little bit bigger. And I don't know if there is an age difference in my plants. So that's, you know, always confound stuff a little bit. But I do like the Mackenzie erronea. Now you say it's suckers. Does it sucker aggressively? No, just from the crown. Just from the crown. It gets really thick as it comes up. Okay, good. How about the birds like choke berries? I think birds do not like choke berries. I've only seen like in some years, when the Robins are really desperate, they'll, you can see beak marks. And the wax wings came in in 2021 when it was so dry and they tried picking at some. But in general, the birds don't like it because I bet it dries their throats out too. Yeah, maybe, maybe like this time of year when there's nothing else to eat. Yeah. They're desperate. Maybe they've mailed out a little too. They might. I mean, I'm not sure, I don't leave any berries on my plants, but I'm not sure how they would taste over the winter, you know, for a bird. How about deer to deer like erronea? I'm sure they do. They're in the apple family and I'm sure the deer love them. Okay. Now, what's the height of an erronea shrub? They're taller than me. I'm five foot six. So they probably get around six feet, maybe six and a half feet tall, something like that, and kind of round. So as big a round as they are tall. Okay. Now, when you make juices, do you have to remove the seeds ahead of time? I do not. I actually just steam juice them, put them in the steam juicer and turn it on and get your juice out. But you could also press them. But no, you don't need to take the seeds out. We'll have a wildlife questions here. How about, what do you think about rabbits? Do rabbits like chokeberry? Rabbits would love them too. I'm sure they would. We've had, we haven't, we don't have rabbit problems, but we have had sometimes rarely, but voles, we've had voles chew on them a little bit in years where we've had a really a lot of snow. So I would consider them to be an edible plant. So now we're back to the seeds inside the fruit. So is there like four seeds in a fruit or how does that work? There's five. There's five. There's five. Five petals and there, so you can have up to 10 seeds. But how big are those seeds? Small, like a raspberry seed size, but not as hard as a raspberry. Okay, that's small. And you just, you can eat those seeds. You can eat them. Yep. Have you ever preserved aronia? I have made aronia jam with them and I found the jam to be astringent, but then I made jelly and the jelly was fine. And how about, let's say you find some aronia plants in the wild. Can you move them? If it's not a public place, I would assume, but I don't think you'll find, you won't find aronia growing wild in North Dakota. I don't think, but you might in Nebraska or somewhere in Missouri. I've seen them in Maine. Actually, I was canoeing on a little lake in Maine and I saw aronia and I tasted them and I thought they were fine. So they were our native, that was native aronia. Kind of cool. Okay. So I think what you would do is, if you wanted to move it, if, let's say it's your own aronia bush and you wanted to just move them to your other side of your house, probably like maybe like kind of now, like, or pretty soon early in spring. Yeah, the spring would be a good time. I would say spring when they're still dormant. Yeah. And if it's kind of a big plant and you need to move it, I would prune it off so that it was kind of small because then the roots are damaged and they don't have to try to support that whole top part of the plant. Okay. This person's got, as a sad case here, they got a five-year-old aronia plant. It's just one plant all lonely by itself and it's not producing the leisure yellow. I'm wondering about chlorosis. Chlorosis. Yeah. You know, the best thing you can try is sulfur. Sulfur, sulfur, sulfur. And I talked about that recently for somewhere. Maybe it was like Williams County, I talked about it, or Ward County. It was for Ward County. Why don't the person who asked about that could try to email me at the Carrington Research Extension Center? It's my name. Oh, it's here, right here. Kathy.Wederhold at NDSU.edu. And there's also an extension bulletin on iron chlorosis. That's really nice. How about get a soil test? And get a soil test. Yes. Just so you know what's the pH, right? A soil test is an excellent idea, like 25 bucks from the university. There you go. So choked cherry can be grown in zone three. It can be choked berry can be grown in zone three and zone four. No worries. Everybody in North Dakota can grow aronia. Everybody can grow it. Yes. Okay. Now it says here from Golden Valley Swell Conservation District, you can order plants. Every conservation district is going to have it probably. Just reach out here. Probably. They had a seed failure a few years ago, so then they didn't have aronia for a couple years. So check it out. Couple bucks a plant. Yeah. If it's available, it's a couple bucks. Yeah. Take a trip to Iowa maybe. Poland. Yeah. How about to aronia plants have thorns? No. No thorns. No thorns. Okay. Easy. Now we've got a southerner. We can grow it in zone three and four. Well, aronia grow in zone five. Yes. Of course. How about? Probably good to around seven. Yeah. Five sounds like Iowa. Could be Wisconsin. Oh, you got those memories, huh? Me too. How about, how do you prune an aronia plant? Well, the best way is to do that renewal pruning. You know, once it gets to be about four or five years old, you'll take out the oldest stuff, the biggest stuff you want to, you want to saw it off or lop it off right at the ground as low as you can. And then, you know, cut out the crossing stuff. And if you need to reduce the height, you find a bud and you cut about a quarter inch above that bud. And then that's where the new shoots will grow from is at that bud. So our website also has some pruning information on it. And there's, I'm sure there's, there's so much pruning information out there. Yeah. Now how about for a cheap person doesn't want to buy a plant for two bucks. They want to propagate it via suckers. Can we do that? Can we just dig out the suckers? You can do that. I do not believe that the Aronia are plant protected. I don't think they are. Oh, those are old varieties. The patents are all gone. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but it will work. And they will, it will work. We weren't that worried about the lawyers. Some of the suckers have. I know it will work. It will work. It will work. It has, if it has roots on it, it will work. And they, they do those, some of those side ones come out and they'll have some roots on them. Okay. Let's, okay. Kathy. Okay. Get a great job, man. I'm, I, I, I'm really thinking about planting some Aronia because it's so easy and it is beautiful. I'm not. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds good. You're all right. So thank you so much for your talk, Kathy. You really enjoyed it. Okay. Sorry. I'm so enthusiastic. We love it. Keep it up. Okay. Bye everybody.