I’m in north Florida and my wild blackberries have been ripping for 2-3 weeks now. Bajillions of them. The biggest crop I’ve ever seen. The deer are having a heyday…
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Dutch,
What zone is your location? Sounds excellent post some pictures if you can.
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Hey Clark, I’m in 8b. You have to zoom the pictures to see the berries good but I have 52 acres and if I haven’t mowed there are blackberries by the bucket. I just planted a dozen elderberry in April too and they all look like this one.
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Looks great! You can raise a lot of things on 52 acres. Hood pears would likely do really well there for you. Actually your zone is the best of both worlds in many ways because you can raise hardy citrus, pomegranate etc. and still raise much of what’s in the colder zones.
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Ive noticed that. I have a bartlett and a stark delicous pear right now them seem to be doing well. The more i mow the more thought i give to planting more. Any suggestions would be totally welcome. I’m retiring in a little over 4 years and would love to have many producing trees by then. I have 3fig 3 apple 2 pear 3 peach 2 sweet cherry 2 hazelnut 2 almond 3 pecan and 5 robinson crabapple for feeding the deer and 2 Mulberry. Im thinking up to 50 or 60 would be a good number.
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I would start a new post just about what to plant cause I can think of a bunch of stuff! Bet you’ll like this topic Oranges in Zone 5 - #19 by warmwxrules. I would absolutely have some citrus in your zone even if some of it was in high tunnels.
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My crop is going to be light this year. Complete floricane die back in one patch ( which are regrowing nicely) and another patch just 30 yards away there was some cane die back but they will produce a light crop.
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just put in a patch of wild canadian blackberries from a patch i found growing nearby. put in 10 plants 5 days ago. 6 have already sent up new growth. the berries are the size of a large raspberry and they produce a lot of tasty fruit, are relatively thornless with a 6ft. maroon colored erect canes and are a true z3 hardy blackberry. i can’t wait till’ i get fruit! i normally don’t get excited over a native berry but i love blackberries and this is the 1st. one I’ve found , native or commercial cultivars, that are true z3 hardy. was planning to try my hand at crossing this plant w/ another cold hardy cultivar with bigger berries but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
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which variety? Freedom?
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This is the first year I did not prune my Ouachita canes. They are at least 6-7’ Tall and are loaded with blossoms. Their blossoms are beautiful and fragrant!
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I actually dont know for sure. Got them as transplants from a friend a few years ago and she didnt remember what variety they were. This is the first year that I have had this amount of top winter kill. Though this was probably the coldest winter we have had since I planted them. Got down to -10 to -15 degree range a couple of nights this past winter.
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I’m so disappointed. I moved my production facility to Santa Barbara last fall. I had an amazing berry garden that I had been working for 5 years. All in all about 600’ of plants with 17 varieties of raspberries and 15 varieties of blackberries and some other crosses. I had some that were smuggled in from New Zealand, wild albino blackberries I had found, a practically seedless blackberry…
I just went back to UT for a visit and stopped by to check it out and half are dead and the others are all overgrown w weeds. Worst thing is that there are thousands of delicious berries that are ripe but I can tell that the new company doesn’t even care as they don’t look like they’ve been touched or picked at all.
Sad. I hoped the new company would have someone that loved berries and would at least do minimal work to keep it up. I guess everyone isn’t a berry freak like me though. 
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Anyone had thornless marionberries and can compare their productivity and taste w thorny ones?
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The crop has been large again this year. The plants are becoming more and more acclimated to the area all the time. They do an incredible job enriching the soil in areas where they have grown. Eventually all plants extract the nutrients they need from an area and the ground will not grow that plant well again until those nutrients are replaced. Weeds are natures way of correcting imbalances. These blackberries are essentially now just a weed that produces fruit. This is always my goal to improve the soil and eat. I wish the previous generations thought like that but instead their goal was to survive. They caused erosion that undid thousands of years of good done by nature. Eventually farmers will realize proper crop rotation includes not just grains but trees and bushes. The problem has always been peoples lives are short so they dont realize a 100 year old oak producing acorns is valuable because they dont live to see the benefit of what they planted. We dont view things that way in my family my grandpa planted things like pawpaws his great grand children eat though he passed away many years ago. These blackberries i grow i dug out and brought here from his patch. These are genetically adapted to Kansas now. One of the many advantages to these berries is how late they bloom.
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I’m jealous…we love blackberries and their so expensive…I’ve had several failed attempts at growing them which is strange because they’re supposed to do well down here…bought 4 new plants and moved locations. Hoping to have better luck…
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I just got 18 of the Stark gems. It rained so hard I didn’t get them in the ground yet. What did you go with? I’ll let you know how mine do when we don’t have 3 inches of rain an hour. It rained like that here to. I agree. That was the hardest just pure rain I’ve ever seen. And I came here in 89 as well… Geez… We might have a storm later this week as well.
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I got three of a variety called sweetie pie…they’re from Mississippi and are supposed to do really well with heat and humidity…I’ll let you know in a couple weeks how they’re doing…not sure what the other ones were, the buckets were unlabeled and it looked like they’d been sitting around at the nursery for a while, but the plants were healthy so I figured I’d give it a shot…
hoping that storm takes a different course…last thing we need is more rain…
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Good luck. Damn Florida. Droughting or Drowning!!! Lol
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I’ve been waiting for my order of 3 starks gems since early May. At this point I hope to get them by frost.