billh
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Post by billh on Dec 30, 2013 18:02:00 GMT -5
My wife and I are slowly starting a berry farm and have planted so far chesters, triple crown, and I think natchez varieties. These are all trailing or semi trailing. This year I'm thinking about trying some erect varieties like Arapaho and Quachita. anyone have their favorites and why? I like the Chesters myself because of taste and size.
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Deleted
Posts: 0
Joined: January 1970
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Post by Deleted on Dec 31, 2013 6:41:59 GMT -5
Arapaho is my favorite thornless variety. Plenty productive, plus they have the fewest and smallest seeds of any variety I know.
I must admit though, I love the taste of regular old thorny wild blackberries.
MB
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billh
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Zone:: 6a
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Post by billh on Dec 31, 2013 9:23:33 GMT -5
I've only read on the Arapaho and they are going in the "test row". I'm with you on the wild ones though.
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swamper
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Post by swamper on Dec 31, 2013 16:49:27 GMT -5
Does anyone have any reports to share on primocane varieties? They are maintained by mowing to the ground in winter, and produce a fall harvest on first year canes. I planted some Prime Jan plants in 2012, but they haven't produced fruit yet.
I also have triple crown thornless blackberries. The flavor is quite good and the berries large, but I'm not sure if I know how to grow and manage the canes, so my crops haven't been bountiful.
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billh
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Post by billh on Dec 31, 2013 20:17:02 GMT -5
hey swamper I think your talking about the primocane raspberries, they produce on 1&2 year old canes. If you want only 1 big crop you mow the canes in the spring and they'll produce 1 crop in the fall. As far as pruning the triple crown blackberries just cut the old canes to the ground, train the new canes and wait for summer.
You can go to starkbros.com/guide and find more info. They also have an ask the pro site too. I use them a lot. Hope this helps.
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swamper
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Post by swamper on Dec 31, 2013 23:11:18 GMT -5
Here's the link where I got the primocane blackberries: noursefarms.com/category/blackberry-plants/As stated I bought Prime Jan which appears to have been replaced by Prime Ark 45. Hopefully I'll get a crop this year and let you know how they do. the second year after I planted Triple Crown I had a fine crop, but got zero new sprouts from the bases. I definitely get plants rooting from the tips of canes, and possibly from rhizomes spreading a distance from the originals. I suppose i should have relocated them to the original row and started over, but i was afraid i'd have the same consequence. I havent taken the project very seriously since the initial failure. I have kept a few alive and gotten a few berries, but they dont seem to be manageable like other brambles I've grown. i will dig a few plants and relocate to a new spot and try again. Maybe the original bare root plants just weren't as hardy as their tip rooted offspring. For what i's worth some of the offspring have thorns.
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reubent
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Post by reubent on Mar 26, 2019 4:28:30 GMT -5
For a long time the only tame thornless we tasted were so sour they were inedible without dumping sugar on them, but then we tasted some from the store that were sweet, it seems the university of Ar keeps breeding new ones to get them sweeter. I got to wandering how blackberries would do for a commercial crop. The wild ones grow with abandon and I like them, was even considering propagating some of them for market. But after some research I decided to go with some thornless large fruited varities because when hiring pickers the large berries are much faster picking and the thornless vines probably will reduce wasted time by pickers having to be careful with the thorns. I picked out 4 varieties with firm enough fruit to be shipable and kind of spread out in ripening from June through Sept. One is a primocane type. I ordered 40 plants to plant now. Takes about 1000 to plant an acre. They are supposed to yield up to $50,000 worth per acre. A farm in Ohio I found good info on grows 22 acres and hires 50 pickers. They need shading to prevent sunburn and refrigeration for delivery. I would not need to winter protect them like they do, we are enough further south to avoid winter kill I think. But I think it's a good possibility if I could get up to 2-3 acres of production for a significant portion of a yearly income. Thinking of maybe trying to get in one acre by next spring. Maybe good addition to apples and whatever else I can grow. Apples would mostly come to harvest after the berries are done. So the pickers could keep going through Oct on them. I may try propagating just a few wild ones to see what they will do on prepared soil with nutritional folier spray for enhanced mineral density. But I'm knocking out thousands of wild canes, they take over fast when I clear an area, and make good berries but they make an impossible prickly jungle to get through to pick them. Will have to trellis them and keep them trimmed and mowed around.
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Post by carolyn on Mar 26, 2019 6:51:03 GMT -5
Ruebent I have a friend who grows 3 acres of blackberries. it is a lot of work. they have to lower the trellises and cover the canes for the winter with 3oz rowcover (and hopefully not break an arm if the handle slips out of your hand and swings around and catches you... that happened a couple years ago to the husband. and prune, spray and find pickers. oyvey! no thanks.. to me they are all sour too. or just wet in my mouth. no flavor. you can't get me to readily eat a blackberry and there aren't many things that I really just won't put in my mouth and try. I will eat elderberries over blackberries. good luck if you do it. you probably don't have the issues with the cold like we do but read up on the dreaded spotted wing drosophila. you will not get a crop without spraying restricted insecticides if it is in your area now, which I would be shocked if it wasn't. my friends they pulled one variety completely out and quit growing it as by the time the crop was ready the fly was here and ruining more than the harvesters could save. I have not heard of anyone being able to grow organically a soft fruit crop and depend on its income. the SWD ruins everything.
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Post by brownrexx on Mar 26, 2019 7:21:51 GMT -5
I never purchase blackberries but I grew up in DE and we had a big wild blackberry patch beside our home. During the summer my mother, brother and I picked berries and she froze quarts and quarts of them. I remember going through that patch and how scratchy the vines were. We had no paths, we just had to find our way to the berries as best we could. Fun times.
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Post by paulf on Mar 26, 2019 10:25:57 GMT -5
We have a couple of spots for Arapahoe. The first we began about five years ago from transplants from a friends patch. They were slow to start bearing and I purchased another few starts fromStark Bros. Now both are going better than expected. They are sweet and huge and so prolific I give away loads. This photo is from last year's one day excess I took down to the Post Office to share. Best part is Arapahoe is thornless.
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Post by hairymooseknuckles on Mar 26, 2019 11:17:42 GMT -5
Oh man, I'm a blackberry fan!
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Post by hairymooseknuckles on Mar 26, 2019 11:20:07 GMT -5
I never purchase blackberries but I grew up in DE and we had a big wild blackberry patch beside our home. During the summer my mother, brother and I picked berries and she froze quarts and quarts of them. I remember going through that patch and how scratchy the vines were. We had no paths, we just had to find our way to the berries as best we could. Fun times. My memories are much the same. Mom made us use a long stick or hoe to make sure the copperheads were away. For some reason the copperheads love to hide in the berry bushes.
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Post by brownrexx on Mar 26, 2019 13:31:12 GMT -5
I do have some raspberry plants but we only get enough to eat while we are out in the garden. I never save any.
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Post by paquebot on Mar 26, 2019 15:39:00 GMT -5
Had a 25' row of an unknown red raspberry for years/ Sometimes produced like crazy and other years were sparse. Replaced them two years ago with Triple Crown blackberry and still looking for the first harvest. All through summer of 2017, kept training those monster canes. While hospitalized for two months, thought of harvesting them last year gave me hope. Came home to find that rabbits had chewed them off at about 6". They came back and made new canes but now waiting to see if they survived the winter.
Martin
The truth is more important than the facts.
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