Chokeberry: useful properties and growing rules
Benefits of dark blue berries chokeberry, or chokeberry, has been known since time immemorial. What does a small berry contain, what diseases does it heal, and for whom is it harmful? Answering these questions, let's not forget that the chokeberry grows perfectly in garden plots without much hassle.
A perennial shrub strewn with fragrant, tasty black berries, many gardeners grow on their plots, knowing about its benefits to human health. The plant is frost-resistant, always gives rich yields of tasty fruits, so it grows in almost all regions of the world.
Content:
- Composition and benefits of chokeberry berries
- The use of the beneficial qualities of chokeberry in medical practice
- Who does black rowan harm?
- Tips for growing chokeberry in the garden
Composition and benefits of chokeberry berries
It is chokeberry fruits that have a large number of useful properties due to their high content of various substances that can strengthen human health:
- The color of rowan berries depends on the content of anthocyanins in them, the amount of which is so high that the fruits are saturated with blackness. The substance perfectly repels pests, protecting the plant itself from them. Although all black berries are the strongest antioxidants, the black chokeberry is superior in this regard, it contains caffeic acid, quercetin, epicatechin and many other substances that are the strongest flavonoids. Due to this composition, many diseases associated with oxidative stress can be prevented by consuming rowan berries.
- In black fruits there is a large amount of vitamins of group B, A, C, P, only they contain so much routine that exceeds its amount in citrus fruits twenty times. A few berries a day - and a person remains young for a long time, with strong immunity.
- In addition to vitamins, the plant supplies our body with calcium, iron, molybdenum, iodine, phosphorus, potassium.
- Among the sugars in chokeberry berries, fructose predominates, and glucose, sucrose is somewhat less. The astringent quality of black berries is associated with tannins, pectins in their composition.
- Of the fruit acids, malic acid prevails in it, the content of which exceeds one and a half percent, and citric acid.
Berries chokeberry not only pleasant to use in compotes, preserves, jams, fresh, but they can also cure some serious ailments.
The use of the beneficial qualities of chokeberry in medical practice
Doctors have long appreciated the benefits of rowan fruits and leaves for human health, it is not for nothing that the plant has taken an honorable place among medicinal raw materials, which is used for the production of many medicines.
Chokeberry is called a cure for all diseases:
- Sorbitol available in berries will replace sugar for diabetics, so they are very useful for this category of patients.
- With a deficiency in the body of rutin, the permeability of the capillaries increases, a person suffers from the fragility of their walls, which leads to bruising from a simple touch. And here the fruits of the black rowan come to the rescue.They strengthen blood vessels, make their walls elastic. Eating up to three hundred grams of fresh or frozen berries daily, you can forget about diseases associated with disruption of the circulatory system. For such pathologies, chokeberry juice (50 milliliters) mixed with honey (15 grams) is useful.
- It has long been known that black mountain ash helps to reduce blood pressure in blood vessels. For hypertensive patients, a preventive measure against crises is juice from black fruits, which is taken in a quarter of a glass three times a day. This drink also reduces the risk of developing glaucoma, especially in older patients.
- Chokeberry berries contain a lot of iodine, more than strawberries, raspberrieswhich helps to improve thyroid function.
- Tannins in blackberry help to cope with diarrhea, normalize stool. In these cases, dried fruits are especially effective, in which such substances are more concentrated.
- Black rowan berries cope well with bad cholesterol, improve the outflow of bile, remove toxins, heavy metals from the body.
- With pathologies of the nervous system, sleep disorders, increased arousal, juices, chokeberry compotes will help.
- Chokeberry will cope with another task - it will strengthen the immune system, health after infections, colds. By preparing a decoction of rowan berries, infused overnight, you can save a child from anemia, hypovitaminosis, anemia. It is especially useful in spring with the addition of rose hips and black currants.
Chokeberry leaves are also beneficial for diseases of the liver, thyroid gland. They have a choleretic, diuretic, anti-inflammatory effect. Outwardly, they are used to prepare compresses in the treatment of psoriasis, lichen, eczema, acne. In order to improve health, the chokeberry provides a person with invaluable benefits.
Who does black rowan harm?
As with any folk remedy, there are contraindications to the use of black chokeberry berries, not everyone can unconditionally, without measure, use it for food. This applies to those who have impaired gastric secretion during gastritis, ulcers.
People with low blood pressure are forbidden to consume chokeberry fruits in large quantities, this can cause negative consequences.
Patients with varicose veins, a tendency to thrombus formation, and high blood coagulability take drinks from blackberry berries with caution, only after consultation with the attending physician.
The effectiveness of drugs based on chokeberry berries has been proven, confirmed by many facts, but one should not forget about the dosage, their negative impact on the health of people at risk.
Tips for growing chokeberry in the garden
To enjoy black fruits often rowan, it is best to plant it on your site. Here are some tips for growing shrub technology:
- Aronia is undemanding to the composition of the soil, so it feels great on the border, it is planted as a protector near the bushes strawberry... The best place for a plant would be a well-lit area with neutral soil or drainage soil.
- Rowan seedlings are planted either in spring, before early May, or in autumn until mid-October.
- The soil near the plantings must be loosened often, mulching with organic matter.
- In dry summer watering it is required to spend twenty days before harvest and at the end of August, two buckets per bush.
- Humus is used to feed the mountain ash tree, compost, ammonium nitrate. Fertilizers are applied three times per season: at the end of April, at the beginning of June, in the last month of summer. In the summer, chokeberry bushes are watered every year with the addition of diluted chicken droppings or cow dung, and also bring in a half-liter jar wood ash.
Harvesting is carried out in September-October, when the berry has reached full maturity.Chokeberry bushes will become a decoration of the garden, bringing health and youth to its owner.
Many berry bushes are grown by gardeners to enjoy fresh, frozen fruits on winter evenings, which almost all will help to cope with health problems during difficult periods of life, in old age. Chokeberry is appreciated for its excellent beneficial properties, which have been used in everyone's diet, have won the trust of people. From the material you can learn not only about the benefits, dangers of a shrub, but also how to grow it in the garden.
More information can be found in the video: