In article , "Paul E. Lehmann"
wrote:

I am considering growing some pyrocantha - Zone 6, central Maryland.
Does anyone have some experience with this plant? I would like to know the
pros and cons. I plan to plant it along a wooden fence. I like the idea of
it being an evergreen - or nearly so - and having edible berries. Has
anyone actually made any jelly or jam or other things from the berries? I
read that it takes a frost or two to make them less acidic.

I have made a spiced jelly very similar to cranberry sauce (but better)
from mixing together rowan berries, hawthorn berries, cotoneaster berries,
rosehips, highbush cranberries (viburnums), crabapples, & sundry
nasty-tasting berries that are quite edible cooked, sieved, sweetened, &
spiced. Though I have never happened to mix in pyrocantha drupes, they
certainly are just as useful. Resulting jellies or sauces are extremely
rich in Vitamin C. They will almost always "set up" without needing pectin
added because they have rather too much pectin naturally. If there's any
chance of the sauce not setting up properly, boiling the sieved-out skins
for a second straining will fix that problem, which can also be done with
apple skins.

You can't make jams from these berries because the seeds are hard &
potentially toxic & have to be carefully sieved out, but the tart jelly
when completed can be used to mix in with jams to help jams set up without
needing pectin added. Some of these bitter berries are toxic when green so
can only be used when definitely ripe, though if a few green berries do
get mixed in, cooking breaks down the toxins. I've been told that the one
winter berry you should never include in a tart sauce is English holly,
that it remains toxic when ripe and might still be toxic after cooking.
Though I suspect this isn't true & cooking would break down the toxins, I
wouldn't personally take the chance of finding out, as you can find
traditional recipes for sauces, syrups, or wine from all these other
berries, I've yet to stumble onto one that recommends holly.

Some clues to making these nasty-tasting berries great-tasting: 1) You
have to like cranberry-like sauce to start with, as nothing is going to
make these drupes completely non-tart. 2) They are less tart after they
have gone through a couple of frosts, & hawberries are almost
sweet-from-the-branches by the middle of winter, tasting like grainy old
apples. 3) Sometimes birds wait until after a couple of frosts, then eat
them up, so you can pick them before frost to beat the birds to them, then
frost them off yourself by putting them in the freezer for a couple of
days; this reduces the amount of pectin increasing the ratio of fructose.
4) Any recipe you would use to prepare fresh cranberries can be adapted
instantly to other tart winter berries. 5) If you're NOT a spicy tart
sauce fan, mixing the berries with apples or pears shifts them a little
bit away from the cranberry-sauce flavor to something more like
applebutter, but still rather "adult" in flavor & not guaranteed to make
children happy.

The negative factor of growing pyracantha is it will stab you far worse
than do hawthorns. It is evergreen & the majority of these tart winter
berry shrubs are deciduous, so being evergreen might be an ornamental plus
for pyracantha. In sunny locations most of these shrubs grow rapidly &
produce copious amounts of berries which most people refuse to harvest. If
grown for the fruit mainly, I'd select highbush cranberry bushes or a
rowan tree before pyracantha because you get more or less the same fruit
but without having to harvest them through thorns.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/