Like you, I have had just a taste of my honeyberries, but am still waiting for my aronia to bear. However, my cousin tells me there is a reason another name for aronia is chokeberry! Northwoodswis

From my limited experience they can both be pretty good and quite bad.

My first exposure to Aronia was juice cocktail bought from Costco in the late 80's. It was delicious, similar to Ocean Spray cranberry juice cocktail but better. (I've also had aronia juice that was awful like the one from Trader Joe's).

My first taste of honeyberry was some juice from One Green World and I thought it was sour and uninteresting.

I now grow both and have had good and bad experiences in different seasons from the same plants.

For Aronia they seem best when grown with sun and heat and lots of water. The berries need to be juicy and fully black and ripe. When picking they should leak staining juice. At this stage the astringency should be nearly or completely gone and they should be sweet. I find very palatable (caveat: results may depend on cultivar/genes).

If these conditions aren't met the berries can be extremely astringent, very bitter, the texture is unpleasant and the good qualities (other than healthfulness) are overwhelmed.

For honeyberries I've found that leaving them on the bush for a good amount of time after they've fully colored improves the flavor and sweetness considerably ranging from not worth eating to mediocre blueberry in appeal.

I'd say aronia has the most upside and the most downside while honeyberry is less likely to thrill or offend.

Chokecherries do choke your throat, more seed then flesh, most people cant eat it straight, good for jellies.
Honeyberries you can eat the whole fruit fresh, [on the sour side] I cover them with fleece when turning blue for another 2 weeks or so to get sweeter, also helps against birds and shaking from wind, otherwise too many fall off.

Chokeberries, not chokecherries. The are totally different and unrelated fruits; aronia melanocarpa vs prunus virginiana.

I have a 'Nero' Aronia. It makes lots of berries, and I have tried them from when they first turn black and every few days after until several weeks have passed, and they never taste sweet. They aren't ever bitter, but they can be astringent. They make a nice jelly that has a winey or tannic quality, very distinctive.

Alex

We had a few Borealis Haskap this year and it was my familys first taste of honeyberry.My kids absolutely loved them!I found the flavour extremely good,can't really explain the flavour but it doesn't taste like any other berry to my taste.....I think I like them more than blueberries!Hopefully these varieties get across the border to you soon!

Glenn

I can confirm the awfulness of the Trader Joe's juice.

Thanks very much for the varied comments.This gives some things to look forward to and experiment with. Brady

Murky,..thanks for the correction! Do Chokeberries have large seeds like Chokecherries? I don't' think we have them here.

Yesterday we picked some of the honey berries, mostly Blue Belle.
I'm amazed how productive these plants are, picked about 8lb from 4 plants. Looks like these are perfect berries for the cold region when nothing much else grows. Supposedly have about 3X more antioxidant then blueberries. What's also nice about these is that you can't feel any seed in there because they're very tiny, I'm seeding some out for a test, I've been layering them and have increased production.

Glenn, I have put a Borealis in also this year, they should be best tasting of all of them,..as they say?

{{gwi:120784}}

Konrad nice looking berries!, what other varieties are you growing?I have a pollinator I can't remember the name of it I think it was either berry blue or blue belle.....berries were small but they were still good. We liked the Haskap so much that I bought 8 more plants, 4 Indigo treat and 4 Indigo gem on sale for $9.49 each:) also going to get Tundra when the price goes down a little in a few weeks, still priced @$25.00 YIKES!

I think it is Berry Blue, find it a bit more sour. One plant I got this year, Opal.

Hi Konrad,

If you are still following this thread, how has your experience with the honeyberries developed? Can you say what what difference the presence of a compatible variety makes to the productivity of the plants? I was sold two plants but I think they are actually the same and after two/three years I'm still only getting 8 fruit from two plants.

Yeah..still here lol. the first ones I obtained...close to 15 years ago, blue belle and berry blue is a really good combination, I planted others since...you just make sure to mix them up and you should be fine.

Borealis is crap...too low in production!

Thanks Konrad. Such a quick response was not expected after such a long gap in this thread. Wow. 15 years! You must be something of a pioneer/expert. I only got onto these plants 4 years ago and found very limited choice in my area. I was trying to establish from you how much difference a partner pollinator makes to production, to learn if I just had a crap variety I should ditch (Morena - sold with the claim "self fertile") or if a different variety would dramatically improve matters. I guess if you have always done the right thing and grown them mixed up, you wouldn't really know. Thanks for the tip about Borealis.