How to freeze chokeberries

The berries of chokeberry or chokeberry have been known in Russia not so long ago - just over a hundred years. Due to their peculiar tart taste, they are not as popular as cherries or strawberries. But the plants are as unpretentious as they have powerful healing powers. Among other ways to prepare healthy berries for the winter, freezing chokeberry is perhaps the easiest. And then use its miraculous properties in a variety of dishes and drinks all year round.

Is it possible to freeze chokeberry

Freezing chokeberries is not only the fastest and most convenient way to prepare berries for the winter. When frozen, chokeberry berries completely retain all their healing substances and properties. And she has a lot of them. Minerals, vitamins, organic acids and pectic substances, which chokeberry berries are full of, allow you to:

improve the functioning of the endocrine system,
strengthen blood vessels,
optimize liver function,
remove salts of heavy metals and radioactive substances from the body;
improve vision.

One of the advantages of freezing chokeberries is the fact that after thawing, the berries practically do not lose their shape, look like fresh and therefore can be used for any purpose for which fresh fruits are usually used. Including for decorating confectionery products and for making a variety of liqueurs and wine. That is, the berries can be used all year round at any time convenient for the housewife, and not just in the autumn, when there are already a lot of worries with the harvest.

Summer care and feeding

Rowan is an unpretentious tree in itself, and accordingly, caring for chokeberry is simple and does not contain any great subtleties. Work begins in early April with trimming and treating the trunks with lime.

Main works:

After the “haircut” the plant experiences “stress”, so you need to cover everything with garden varnish.
In April, it is necessary to spray the chokeberry from insects and microbes located in the bark or soil under the tree.
In May, with the appearance of weeds, the weeding period begins; also in May, the seedlings need to be fed.
To obtain a rich harvest, it is advisable to feed the seedlings regularly.

Supervising the chokeberry in the summer consists of observing the species so as not to miss the first moment of the development of the infection. If the first signs of illness appear, it is necessary to carry out sanitation - using folk remedies or specialized compounds.

How to properly freeze chokeberries

The most important principles that must be taken into account in order to properly freeze chokeberries at home for the winter are the appropriate harvest time and careful preparation of the berries.

It is necessary to collect fully ripe chokeberries for freezing. Depending on the climatic conditions of the region, it ripens from late August to late September. Berries collected at the time of full ripening, but before the onset of frost, retain their shape well, but have a pronounced tart taste. The berries reach their maximum filling with nutrients and healing substances just at the time of the first frost. Therefore, it is more advisable to collect chokeberry berries for freezing for the winter around this period, before or immediately after the first frost.

The next important stage is preparing the collected berries for freezing. They are first removed from the brushes and cleaned of all kinds of natural debris. Then they are washed in several waters, finally rinsed in cool water and laid out in a single layer on clean kitchen towels to dry.

Important! Only clean and completely dry chokeberry berries should be frozen.

True, there is one peculiarity here. If in the future you plan to make homemade wine or liqueur from the chokeberry after defrosting, then it is not advisable to wash the berries. Because wild yeast lives on the surface of unwashed fruits, which, by the way, are perfectly preserved even in deep freezing conditions. They contribute to the natural fermentation of chokeberry wine. Of course, for good fermentation, you can always add artificial yeast to the wort, but this will not affect the taste of natural homemade wine for the better.

In this case, you just need to carefully sort the berries, free them from debris and spoiled specimens, and dry them thoroughly.

Depending on how you plan to use the chokeberry berries in the future, there are several ways to freeze them. But no matter what method is chosen, you should be aware that when re-frozen, chokeberry loses a significant part of its beneficial properties. This means that freezing must be carried out in small portions, so that one portion is enough to prepare a particular dish or drink.

As an exception, we can only mention the method of shock freezing, in which the berries are frozen in such a way that they are stored in bulk and the required number of fruits can be easily separated at any time.

Advice! Frozen chokeberries should not be stored in the same compartment as fish or meat.

It is better to use a separate freezer compartment to preserve fruits and berries.

Diseases and pests

By planting fruit trees on their plots, they expect to grow and harvest a good harvest. But, as often happens, the world of gardening encounters many problems with plants, the most basic of which are diseases and pests. All diseases, without exception, can lead to a decrease in yield, and in some cases, to the death of seedlings, so it is necessary to notice the symptoms of the disease in time. By noticing the signs of infection in time (at the beginning), you can save not only the diseased tree, but also the plants growing nearby.

Below is a list of the main diseases affecting this type of plant:

Peripheral wood rot. Occurs due to the influence of honey mushrooms. You can remove the infection: 1% Bordeaux mixture (any other type of fungicide can be used); completely dig up the bush (with roots) and burn it.
Rotten berries - moniliosis. Under the influence of this disease, the berries become soft, greatly lose color (brightness) and become covered with cobwebs (mummified). Spore-bearing pads appear on the outer shell of the fruit (color: light brown). If you do not cut off the affected berries, there is a high risk of infection of the entire bush in the spring.
Septoria spot - usually appears in July, in the form of oval spots (light brown) with a dark border. In the case of a prolonged disease, the dark inclusions spill out and the leaf profile becomes a “hole.” If the tree is infected, all infected leaves must be collected and burned.
Comb fungus is a fungus that appears on a seedling due to rot. The appearance consists of white or brown-gray plates. Treatment consists of cutting and burning all infected branches.

The diseases listed above are not all, so it is necessary to constantly monitor the appearance of the seedlings.

Below is a list of pests for chokeberry:

Ticks (brown and red) are very small insects that attack all fruit plants in the area. You can get rid of them by spraying with any chemicals produced to control pests.
Aphids are sucking insects that are also carriers of various diseases. Most often, young bushes suffer from aphids.
Hawthorn is a caterpillar that eats first the buds, and then the flowers and leaves of the plant.
The mountain ash moth and the slimy cherry sawfly are insects that destroy both berries and tree leaves. To avoid infestation and insect development, it is necessary to cleanly and scrupulously remove leaves and burn them every fall and spring.

Important! Always on time: remove (burn) foliage under seedlings, cut out all damaged branches and collect all fruits, as well as spray.

The following medications help with most parasites and diseases:

Karbofos;
Abiga-pik;
Copper oxychloride;
Karbofos;
Nitrafen;
Bordeaux mixture;
Decis;
Ambush;
Zolon;
Chlorophos;
Oleocuprite, etc.

If such problems arise with the tree, you should consult with the seller at a specialized gardening center.

Caring for chokeberry in the fall, preparing for winter - the actions are simple and not complicated. There are a number of features, failure to comply with which can lead to disastrous results (the worst thing is the death of the seedling), namely:

Do not leave many small shoots (more than five) in the crown, because after they grow, your bush will turn into a “dense” tree.
Do not feed rowan abundantly, because fertilizer only brings growth to the greenery, and not to the berries.
If you are late in covering the bush, the branches will freeze and, as a result, most of them will break (at subzero temperatures, branches are difficult to bend).

How to freeze chokeberry in containers

This freezing method can be called the most universal in use and simple in the process itself.

To freeze and store chokeberries for the winter, use containers of any convenient size and shape. Most often, these can be plastic boxes for a variety of salads or ready-made dishes.

The most important thing, as mentioned above, is the preliminary preparation of the berries. Completely dried chokeberry fruits are loosely laid out in clean and dry containers, covered with lids and sent to the freezer.

Chokeberry berries frozen in this way can be used for almost any dish: compotes, fruit drinks, jelly, healing syrups, preserves, jam, pie filling. They are added to dough when baking instead of raisins, they are used to make smoothies, tinctures, liqueurs, homemade wine, or simply added to tea along with decoctions of other medicinal herbs.

Attention! It is from frozen chokeberry berries that especially tasty jam is made, since when water freezes, it breaks the cell walls and through the resulting microcracks, sugar from the syrup penetrates and saturates the fruit much more easily.

For the same reason, chokeberry, which when fresh is distinguished by the relative dryness of its fruit, becomes especially juicy after defrosting, and is much more pleasant to eat simply for food.

Healing drinks

Chokeberry makes excellent and very healthy drinks: jelly, compotes, tinctures. Pounded berries, like the leaves of the plant, can be used to brew tea. Well, compotes, rolled up for the winter, will serve as a real elixir of health and will remind you of warm autumn days.

Compote, like jam, can be made from different berries and fruits. One of the most exquisite combinations will be a blend of chokeberry with quince. It’s not difficult to prepare such a compote, and you can enjoy it all winter. For a 1 liter jar, take ripe black rowan berries (250 g) and pour boiling syrup from water (800 ml) and sugar (400 g) over them. The jars are rolled up and left upside down until they cool.

Read also: Amaryllis does not bloom, amaryllis diseases, amaryllis pests

Shock freezing of chokeberry for the winter

Blast freezing provides all the same benefits, but in addition, the ideal shape of the berries is preserved, so they can be used to decorate cakes, pies, casseroles and other baked goods.

The essence of shock freezing is that the berries are frozen at a temperature of at least - 18 ° C very quickly, literally in 1.5-2 hours. As a result, the sugar contained in chokeberry fruits does not have time to turn into starch and the berries completely retain their original structure.

At home, the following technology is used. Washed and well-dried chokeberry berries are laid out strictly in one layer on a flat tray or baking sheet and placed in the quick-freezing compartment.

After a few hours, the frozen fruits are taken out and poured into conveniently sized plastic bags for storage. It is most advisable to use bags with a zip fastener. They are filled with frozen berries, as much air as possible is released from them and sealed tightly. After which they are placed in a general compartment for long-term storage.

The berries are stored in bulk, do not freeze into one continuous mass and are therefore very convenient for further consumption.

Freezing chokeberry with sugar in the form of puree

It is very convenient to freeze chokeberries in the form of puree, mashed with sugar. In this case, after defrosting, you can get a completely ready-to-eat delicious and very healthy dish. This is a practically ready-made filling for pies, a base for jam, and an additive to cottage cheese dishes.

Freezing chokeberry in this way is very simple:

The prepared fruits are simply mixed with sugar in a ratio of approximately 2:1. Then grind using an immersion blender or mixer.
Leave for about an hour at room temperature.
Place the prepared puree into clean and dry plastic or glass containers with lids so that there is free space at the top of the container.
Close with hermetically sealed lids and place in the freezer.

What can you cook from frozen chokeberry?

Defrost chokeberry fruits in the lower section of the refrigerator or under normal room conditions.

Important! To make jam or preserves, the fruits can not be defrosted at all, but immediately placed in boiling sugar syrup.

Often, chokeberry fruits, after defrosting, are used to make homemade wine, tinctures and medicinal teas. In winter, compotes and other non-alcoholic drinks with the addition of frozen chokeberries will be healthy, tasty and beautiful.

It is also often used as an additive to any prepared jam, especially with a sour taste. It can increase its value and improve its taste. And homemade chokeberry jam has an original taste and is very healthy.

Finally, once frozen, this berry is invaluable when used in any baked goods, both for fillings and decoration.

“Fragrant” liqueur

What to cook from chokeberry? Delicious, pleasant alcoholic drink. The process itself is quite simple and does not require much time or components.

Products:

berries - 1.5 kg;
granulated sugar - 500 g;
high-quality vodka - 1-1.5 l.

Sort the berries, rinse and place in a glass jar, filling it up to the shoulders. Add granulated sugar and pour in alcohol. Cover with a plastic lid and put in a cool place for 3 weeks. Strain and pour into a convenient container. Keep refrigerated.

What else can you do with chokeberry? There are many other options for preparing delicious chokeberry dishes. By modifying some of the proportions in these recipes, you can make several options for sweet dessert and wine that will delight both small children and adults.