Yes, but is rare to see. They seem to have some resistance.
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Mosaic is bad on red rasp. Black rasp. Is present in your wild population.
Spread by aphids ,I never sprayed.
Rust hits black rasp. And thorny black berries .never saw it on thornless.
Also present in your wild population.
Best to plant a new planting in the middle of a cleared field ,as far from the hedge rows and wild plants as possible .
This is usually not possible on small farms.and does not fit with permaculture ideals. The life of the planting may just be shorter
People who live in a Suburban setting may benifit from lack of wild hosts.
Sorry ,but I prefere it wild
Also ,I just dug up a long list of varietys I trialed,but did not work for me.
Can’t say why ,just did not work at the time .bad sight ? Low fertility ?
Diseased ? Wrong reagion ? Who knows ?
Here they are:
Haut
Illinois hardy
Tullamen
lowden
Latham
Ruby
Redwing
Succes
Lucretia
Tayberry
Logan
Dickson
Mammoth red
There was more , thou no record
I am in West Virginia , so things are different ,in different regions
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Thanks again for the info.
We have three or four large wild bramble areas that surround our immediate farm property, most have blackberries. We have a pasture to our south that don’t have as many, but they are still there. So, we don’t really have anywhere that’s totally clean. Plus, the soil is poor, and would require amending.
But, think I may be good, the blackberries I’m interested in are thornless like Osage, PrimeArk Freedom and Triple Crown. Plus, I’m holding off on any black rasps for now.
We’re about 20mi from the Ohio River, and about 50mi from the WV border, so we’re not that far apart.
@BobVance, I was wondering how your black and raspberries (and any other berries) did this year. I recall in an older post you had 4 different blackberry varieties planted right next to each other? Weren’t they Natchez, Arapaho, Osage and PAF?
My thornless types have been the most trouble free and longest lives.
They don’t tast like black raspberrys ,though.
I planted apple trees in a Chester row. As the trees got big the berry bushes got smaller. To the point of hardy any fruit. 15 yrs later a tree died.and the berry came back to production .
I have a good hedge of triple crown, 15yrs old and going strong.verry tart.
Makes a good juice concentrate .
Planted a few Natchez ,and prime ark freedom in my high tunnel this spring.
The flavor of prime ark freedom is the best of any thornless I have tried .
And the biggest berry I ever grew. Iam excited about it.
Here is pic. From one I planted this spring
Sweet ,not tart and did I mention big.
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Yes, I planted those in 2015. You would think that by year #3 they would be pretty productive, but I didn’t get that much this year. In fact, it seemed a down year for blackberries in general- very few Triple Crown and while I got a lot of Prime Jan late in the season, I didn’t get much early on.
Natchez and Arapaho grew pretty big though, so hopefully they will be more productive next year. They weren’t all that erect- they had started to flop over late in the season, so I tied them up (maybe a month ago?). I think that both of those two had some berries- a decent number from one and a few from the other. I didn’t take good notes though. Of the other two varieties, I think I got 1 or two reasonably tasty berries.
I think I’ve done a poor job controlling weeds in my blackberries. Late in the season, I put down cardboard around those 4, but still haven’t weeded and mulched the others. I was just looking at Prime Jan earlier today and considering how much of it to prune back- it’s gone kind of wild, spreading underground. Given the thorns, it makes it hard to get around the area. At least they don’t grow like hardy kiwis. I was looking at the massively overgrown kiwi vines earlier today and trying to decide what to do with them. I think I need to get a better lopper to prune it, though it is tempting to use a chain saw…
Edit:
Within 5 minutes of posting this, I found a set of loppers which has this in the first review. I think I’ll pick them up tomorrow.
They have the ergonomic juice to deal with diameters up to two inches or better and allow me to get to root level so no problems when mowing recently cleared areas. …Highly recommend them when a chain saw just seems a little excessive.
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Thanks for the BB report, sorry you didn’t get a lot of fruit from them. You think the weeds had something to do with that? Or maybe the floricanes got zapped last winter?
How did your raspberries do this year?
I think weeds are the bigger factor. Last winter was actually milder than the two prior winters (0F vs negative 8-9F). Weeds aren’t a new issue for me, but they seem to have a cumulative effect- they retard growth of primocanes, which affects the next year as well. So, at this point, I’m looking at a small Triple Crown harvest next year, because there hasn’t been too much primocane growth.
I faced the same sort of issue with raspberries, though they are hard to kill through neglect. But, some of them are getting a bit sparse. I’m actually planting jujube throughout my main raspberry row next year. I’ll leave a lot of them in between the trees, but I figure it is good to put the two things I don’t spray together. Maybe this will motivate me to weed them better.
What berries I did get were pretty good, especially Anne.
True, but I brought wild plants into the mix myself. I have a wild black raspberry that appears immune to mosaic. None of the wild patch has ever had it.
I like to breed brambles, so wild plants help introduce genes missing in the cultivars. Although I much prefer cultivars as they fit my needs better. If they do not I try to breed a better fit. I keep a stock of wild bramble seeds, I have at least 10 wild plants saved as seed for future crosses.
You are as most modern cultivars have resistance bred in and if they become infected are often asymptomatic, so who cares?
The problem with thornless is many have raspberry genes. Such as the Ark series. The primocane fruiting trait is from raspberries…
Also Columbia Star and Columbia Giant has raspberry genes, not primocane fruiting but thornless too. Anne raspberry is almost thornless also.
So i suspect these are probably not immune to mosaic.
Having black raspberries around helps ID the problem. If they remain good, it’s not mosaic.
I love the taste of wild berries in just about any berry but wilds are often small and unproductive. Many cultivars have been developed that capture that taste yet are more productive and have bigger berries, and often resistance too, such as New Berry, or in blueberries the half highs, and a few others like Sunshine Blue.
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I now have peach and plum trees shading my Caroline’s so the berries were slim and small. My lawn mowing man also wiped out fifty percent of my crop with his weed eater! Geeze! My kiwi gold were huge and fabulous, my Jewel black raspberry had very little taste. My Ouachitas were huge and delish! But a small crop only. I have tons of pruning to do this feb!
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Thanks for the report. I’ve been reading more about Ouachita as a BB possibility. Are they big canes, and do the berries only get sweet until they’re about to fall off the cane?
I’ve been in and outside alot today, and I checked out those wild canes that were white earlier in the year. Well they’re now purple, and they’ve already started to tip root. So, we ought to have more blackcaps next year.
Contrary to my above advice a friend dug up some of those wild black raspberry starts from the woods and lined them out in his garden.
They did quite well for a number of years.
I was impressed. And free.
Another option ,as I did when I was about 10yr. Old ; is to adopt a wild patch.
When my dad was off to work, I would sneak down to a local berry patch with his riding lawn mower.
I would cut as many picking paths through it as I could, until something broke.
Then try to explain that hey I was just mowing the yard.and it broke.
He would have about killed me if he saw what I was doing .
Sorry if this is inappropriate here as it was not in 2017 !
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OK, I thought I’d get some pics of these canes before the rain gets here. Very windy and unseasonably warm today, but that will change tonight. Tomorrow will be mid 30s for highs with some flurries, and getting into the 20s tomorrow night.
Anyways, here they are:
Two views of a cane that has several tips rooting:
A mess of some canes rooting:
Close up of some tip rooting:
Some nice thick canes coming up out of the leaves. Note the old floricane in top of pic:
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The canes grow to about 7-8’ tall. No, they sweeten before they fall off of the stem, but it is a tarter BB. They are the size of ping pong balls! The flowers are enormous as well and very fragrant. The best part is that they are thornless. Cat birds love them.
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I’m not all that fond of Ouachita, but they were the most productive by far this year. The canes do get big and they seem to be making headway against the weeds, unlike Triple Crown and Apache. The flavor isn’t as good as TC, but they aren’t bad. I don’t normally wait for the so-ripe-they-are-about-to-fall stage, as SWD would be wiggling away in a decent percent of them by that point.
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So is Triple Crown your best tasting BB? Didn’t you plant a PA Freedom back in 2015, or was it a Prime Jan?
How did your gooseberries do this year?
TC is the best tasting thornless & erect BB that I’ve tried. Among all blackberries, Marionberry is the tastiest, but it is thorny, trailing, and not hardy. At it’s best, Boysenberry is better than TC as well, but it seems to be too sour in most years, at least until dead-ripe.
Yup, I planted PAF in 2015 (with Natchez, Arapaho, and Osage). They’ve taken their time establishing.
Hit or miss. Some of them had bad leaf spot due to all the spring rains. It lead some of the plants to lose most of their leaves, which results in horrid berries (a plant with all berries and no leaves never ripens properly). I did have a Black Velvet which was very productive. Since my opinion of gooseberries has kind of dimmed, I didn’t rush to pick them until they were very ripe. At that point (maybe 14 brix) they are actually pretty good to eat. But, I think only 1 of my ~20 bushes was like that (some didn’t set much, others got eaten by wildlife, etc), though it produced maybe a quart or two.
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I keep hearing about MB, I just thought it was some exotic berry, but it’s just another BB, developed in Oregon. Sounds like an interesting fruit. Do they taste like a typical BB, that is really tart (or sour), and very little sweetness, until it’s about to fall off the cane? Are they what a lot folks say they are, that is, the best of all BB’s?
I’m having a hard time finding folks who sell MB, other than Stark Bros. I’ll need to look around some more. I know Nourse and Indiana Berry don’t sell them.
I wonder why they’re taking so long for you. Is it because BB’s like warmer climes? I know you’re borderline zone 7, but do BB’s really thrive in New England?
my polkas, jaclyn and autumn britten had great crops considering i over fert / burnt them last spring. just put in anne and joan j as well as baby cakes dwarf thornless blackberries and ohio treasure everbearing black raspberries. should see good crops next summer. found a patch of the 1st. wild blackberries I’ve ever seen in n. maine that are nearly thornless. started cuttings to plant come spring. are small berried but prolific producers with great taste! if you z 3-4 guys want a cold hardy blackberry for your zone contact me next spring and ill send you some cuttings of these. got a great crop of goumi this year and also some honey berry and serviceberries for the 1st time. great crop of consort blackcurrants also for 1st time this summer. love the jam, my new fav.! got awesome crops off my evie 2 and earlyglow strawberries. the evies produced till early nov.! was a good overall season.
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i have PAF but the stalks freeze above the snowline so I’m going to lay them down and cover w/ straw for the winter then put them under a homemade hoop house come spring to get them growing early and extend the season come fall so i can get berries from them.