Blackberries, Raspberries and Hybrids

Cooler yes, but not wetter. All of western Washington is dry in the summer, we generally only get a a few days of rain between July and mid September. We are actually one of the driest parts of the US during these months!

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In fairness a lot of places in California don’t get hot in the summer.

Here in eastern NC, raspberries especially are much worse when we get early heat spells. The fruits ripen up way too quickly and are small and sour. This year has been a good raspberry year so far as it’s been uncharacteristically mild this May. The Glencoe canes that survived last year have managed to set and ripen a few dozens of fruit, with several dozen more on the way. The flavor is ok, but at least they are low in acidity and mildly sweet. Bababerry is doing exceptionally well for a raspberry and looks to be a keeper. My sad, sickly Cascade Harvest patch looks like it will attempt to ripen a few berries. Unless those berries are phenomenal, Cascade Harvest is getting pulled. Heritage, actual Heritage not big box “Heritage” seems to be establishing alright.

Tayberry was a complete loss this year, only two fruit ripened, and both of them were fruits I hand-pollenated and bagged so they’re for propagating not for eating. This is my first year getting Loganberries. They have good raspberry-like flavor and aren’t as hard to harvest as Tayberry but they take a long time to ripen up fully and are still very sour even when fully ripe. I enjoy them well enough, but the rest of the family won’t eat them.

Mysore looks to be a few days away from ripe. The berries don’t look like they’ll be very big, but I’m hopeful they’ll be decent. I hand pollinated several of them with European raspberry and will be sowing those seeds as well, hoping they germinate.

PAF have taken too much deer damage. They set and ripened a few dozen fruit. The fruit are characteristically large and have decent sweetness, but it’s clear the plants aren’t happy. I think this week will be the last of the PAF this year until the primocanes fruit. Kiowa is just starting to ripen, I’ve learned to let them get very ripe before picking. Sweetie Pie are sizing up but still a ways away from ripening. My first year Prime Ark 45 plants bloomed heavily but the berries didn’t fill out well. They’re about halfway through ripening. So far, they’re unpleasantly sour and astringent. I’m going to wait and see though since these plants aren’t fully established yet.

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Hi, I grew Mysore here in the Subtropics and it did very well but although the fruit was sweet, with no sourness, they were completely flavourless, about 2g to 3 g each. I also crossed them with thornless red raspberry. I only got 2 plants that survived. One was very vigorous but highly infertile while the other was weaker but had high fertility. I have 2 thornless plants from the F2 generation. They are not very vigorous but may fruit in Spring, Setpt/Oct here.

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Yeah the average summer high temperature in the areas where most commercial caneberry growing takes place is in the low 70s.

With a bit of protection from sun/heat, I have been able to grow black raspberries, blackberries, and marionberries with only a little bit of fruit loss due to sunburn. Summer temps here are in the 80s-90s with some days in the hundreds, but essentially everything I grow is harvested before we get our first major heatwaves. I’m not sure late blackberries or fall-bearing raspberries would work as well.

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I’m hoping that my crosses, if I get any, will have decent vigor, or at least enough to get me to F2 in a reasonable amount of time (I’m expecting poor fertility in F1 but hoping that F2 and F3 will be better). My experience has been that most thornless brambles have low vigor. I’ve used thorny varieties so far, maybe that’ll help. We’ll see, I don’t want to count my chickens before they’re hatched, and they haven’t hatched yet.

I’m also very curious about but keeping my expectations low for the 2x raspberry x 6x hybrid crosses I made. If I do get any progeny from them, they are likely to be 4x hybrids with a mixture of blackberry and raspberry genetics (in theory, 3/4 raspberry, but since the 6x hybrids are from 4x blackberries and 2x raspberries, I feel like the actual balance of genetics in any 4x hybrids I might get would probably be closer to 50/50). But we’ll see.

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I think I may have a problem but I can’t quite put my finger on it…

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Good luck. I have read that backcrosses to Red raspberry increases fertility. I am going to cross my fertile F1 Purple with a highly fertile thornless, primocane fruiting, Purple raspberry, from a cross of R. occidentalis x Red rasp. The 2 Purples crossed should give me about 50% Thornless, 50% Purple, 25 % Black and 25% Red. The fruit size will only be aroud 2 to 3g but I am hoping for some good flavours. Mixing R. occidentalis, R. niveus and R.idaeus should hopefully give me a Black and Purple raspberry adapted to the Subtropics.

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That is a cool picture but D:

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I am attempting the same cross of a 6x Blackberry/raspberry hybrid x a Big Red raspberry (2x) I have also crossed a 4x Blackberry with a 4x Red Rasberry I produced from Colchicine treatment. I do not know if the fruit will mature as the weather is cooling down now, going into Winter.
Myore x MR F2 T'less_1

Pic is of the thornless Mysore x Red Rasp F2’s.

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Wth are those… i would touch that with a weed torch :face_with_spiral_eyes: just enough to kill the bugs but not to harm the fruit

Looks like Leaf Footed Bug nymphs.

Their eggs likely were under the leaves of your plants or on the stems.

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Yep, and I hate them. Always get them on my tomato’s (which I chose not to grow this year or any veggies basically) and some blackberries as well. I just walk by and flick them into oblivion, maybe it doesn’t work well, but it sure is a satisfying control method.

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@PcChip … per google to control those… hand pick, soapy water, neem oil…

Instead of hand picking you might try a pocket vac… should make quick work of collecting those.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Pocket-Vac-Rechargeable-Handheld-Vacuum-with-Accessories-New-Cordless-Portable-As-Seen-on-TV/1940530779?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=0&selectedOfferId=E05189DC151435F495D1FFA3A06DE99B&conditionGroupCode=1&wl13=1115&gclsrc=aw.ds&adid=222222222781940530779_161193766053_21214199653&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=m&wl3=697173827980&wl4=pla-2348450966064&wl5=9013650&wl6=&wl7=&wl8=&wl9=pla&wl10=8175035&wl11=local&wl12=1940530779&veh=sem_LIA&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21214199653&gclid=CjwKCAjw6NrBBhB6EiwAvnT_rpTYdMfKPAhk3jFDZF0CSZRqvm4Rnfg88hAOxl_SMk0_QgtTr4qmzRoC3BEQAvD_BwE

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interesting blackberry espalier and pruning:

not quite sure why the playlist starts with video 2 :man_shrugging:

the fourth video has a nice explainer about frozen flowers and buds that will end up flowering but still be dead on the inside.

Picked the first Mysore raspberry today.

The berries are quite small with a lot of tightly packed drupletes that are reasonably juicy but have a lower pulp to seed ratio than most cultivated berries. The skin is tougher than most raspberries, reminded me of some wild blackberries. Low acidity, a bit of sweetness, and some raspberry flavor. Very, very deeply pigmented juice. The flavor had something else going on that I couldn’t place for a bit, something like slightly bitter dark fruit, but then it clicked: blood orange. I guess it’s the high anthocyanin content (hence the intense color), but the flavor seemed to me to be raspberry plus blood orange.

The berry quality is decent, but nothing amazing. I’m quite curious to see what the fruit from these seeds, provided they germinate and are fertile, will be like.

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Hi, You are lucky. There are some strains of Mysore Raspberry that have good flavour and looks like you got something close. My Mysore had no flavour at all. The F1 with red raspberry had a just detectable raspberry flavour. My Mysore and the F1’s did not go fully dormant over Winter. They lost half their leaves from the bottom up but the top half stayed green and grew slowly. It was Floricane fruiting. Was yours like this too ?

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My Mysore are floricane fruiting as well. They lose most of their leaves after moderate frost and by mid-winter the canes have mostly died to the ground. I think the canes are hardy to the very low twenties or so but not into the teens. Prolonged cold seems to be an issue for them as well. I had to protect some canes over the winter in order to get any fruit.

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Yes, I forgot how scary cold it gets in most of the US. In most of Australia temps do not go below -5C, 23F. Here it only gets to 0C, 32F, but it has been getting warmer over the past 35 years and I have not had a frost in over 10 years. Good conditins for growing Mysores. They are a declared weed species in the State below mine and not welcome where I am. I destroyed my Mysore after I got a successful hybrid.

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Yeah, I don’t think there’s a single place in the US like Queensland. Maybe Puerto Rico? The coastal areas of the West Coast is pretty similar to parts of NSW I feel like, maybe a little Tasmania, and like the southern part of WA, big the rest of the country? Eh, the mountain West is sort of like Patagonia but the plains and for sure the east coast are completely unlike anything in the southern hemisphere. The only similar similar climate is East Asia. Year round or nearly so moisture, hot summers, brutally cold winters, and pretty strong but not tropical sun, that’s the eastern US, Japan, eastern China, and basically nowhere else on earth, maybe a few areas in the northern Balkans and Caucuses near the Black Sea, and perhaps a tiny sliver of the Himalayan lowlands.

I could see Mysore becoming a weed in Florida though. And Hawaii, everything becomes an invasive weed in Hawaii…

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