What variety is this, PAF?
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What is the variety name of these eastern European blackberries?
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no an Eastern European one that was bred for commercial production.
I just made a nice batch of jam with them and am totally pleased. The flavor is very complex with sweet and tart and lots of flavor. I have Ponca and Caddo one row over and i eat them at the same time. Ponca has no complexity for me…just sweet. Caddo has a tinge of tart but theres a flatness to it.
I will take a pic this weekend of some 4 month old plants that i started a new row with… total insanity of how vigorous they are. First year they are almost semi erect… long sprawling canes that go like an octopus everywhere… 2nd year they are erect and stout. I had to cut the tops out of my primocanes against my own judgement…they were totally blocking all sun to these berries…not sure how to deal with that going forward.
my PAF struggle…and they always have. Im trying 3 other primocane fruiting ones now. Horizon, Gem and Sweet Giant… will know more on those next year.
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Hey @krismoriah … speaking of west coast berries… how are your Obsidian doing.
Below a couple pics of mine that i just took. We are getting another July rain today
I let each of my 2 crowns send up 2 pcanes.
Those 4 canes have each grown around 9 ft at this point. They have some laterals that have developed and some of those are 3 ft long now…
They look kind of wierd though… the leaves are sort of scrunched up looking. Dont look like an east coast blackberry at all. The canes also seem to be quite fragile. I broke the growing tip off one just trying to tie it to my trellis…
Just wondering how yours are doing… and if they look wierd like mine ?
I can deal with the wierd look if they make a bunch of nice tasting large early blackberries.
Hope these canes survive our winter.
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…that’s exactly the growth habit my Obsidians had a few years ago. They did make scattered, good-tasting fruit. Removed because of low production and difficulty training due to fragility.
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Thanks @LarryGene
Hmmm and you are on the west coast.
I thought mine might be looking weird because my location was way different than what they were used to.
Well maybe i get lucky and they produce like crazy in TN. Hopefully I will find out next year.
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Mine look the same… and i also bought 2 more plants from a total different vendor and planted them in a totally different row. Looks like psyllid to me.
There is very little info on blackberry psyllid. I plan on letting my ladybugs and wasps deal with mine as they are the natural predators. You can spray hort oil this fall if you dont have any or few predators.
It could be something else im still trying to figure it out… but if it is that means that these propagators or nurseries are spreading this all over the US…because mine and yours arrived infected.
Likely next year neither of us will have any kind of crop to report… as the canes are damaged… The following year the plants could clear up if all the pests are removed…its them thats damaging the canes.
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Lots of new varieties of both raspberry and blackberry coming but some appear to be club varieties
For example, I would love to get Reyna from Driscoll but seems impossible
The Superior Taste Award is a certification granted by the International Taste Institute to food and drink products that went through a positive taste evaluation by a panel of more than 200 professional taste experts.
The sweet-eating Driscoll’s Victoria blackberry variety and the Driscoll’s Reyna raspberry variety were awarded with a 3-star rating. These were both declared ‘Exceptional Products’. Another three Driscoll’s varieties received the 2-star rating, which stands for “Remarkable Products”: Yazmin raspberries, Raymi and Rosita blueberry varieties.
More varieties…
On the raspberry side, Nourse has some new varieties from ABB which you can buy here
https://www.noursefarms.com/netherlands-advanced-berry-breeding-varieties/
I am going to trial Mpema
Exciting times
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Not seen anyone talk about these but i have been reading a little on them… ‘Vintage’ red raspberries seem like a suitable replacement for fans of ‘Heritage’ larger berries, sweeter, stronger canes, less seeds as well. Seems to be superior to Caroline as well.
I think i will add this one.
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I bought these plants a few years ago and i destroyed them i think due to me being upset that they werent the thornless purple glencoe… I wish i would have kept them. So i am going to try to find them again. No info that i can find that they even exist as a red raspberry… i do remember they were the thorniest red raspberry that i have ever seen… I have seen ads on the internet of people reselling them so i guess they are back in stock at Lowes in some locations… interesting to see how they do.
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We have evaluated many primocane-fruiting cultivars including: Autumn Bliss, Autumn Britten, Caroline, Rafzaqu (HimboTop®), Jaclyn, Joan Irene, Joan J, Polana, Polka, and Summit among others and none have had as good a flavor as ‘Vintage’ in our environment. Although ‘Vintage’ and ‘Heritage’ fruit were found to have a similar percent of soluble solids, ‘Vintage’ had a slightly higher juice pH and a titratable acidity that was almost 50% less than that of ‘Heritage’ (Table 3). ‘Vintage’ fruit, in addition to having a full raspberry flavor, were perceived to be sweeter as a result of the higher sugar-to-acid ratio.
Best tasting and 22 days earlier than Heritage. I thought it was a late variety
Compared with ‘Heritage’, the harvest season of ‘Vintage’ started 22 d earlier, reached 50% harvest 19 d earlier, and finished ≈10 d ahead in 2008–10. The harvest season was 11 d longer than that of ‘Heritage’.
Thanks
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@TNHunter praises his Heritage due to them being early and also having a nice fall crop which i think in his case makes Heritage great for skipping SWD.
In the case of Vintage it also seems superior being ripe a couple of weeks earlier than Heritage. Also the ripening window being 11 days longer means a greater yield.
Ripening for the Fall crop seems to be a week or two earlier than Heritage which for folks north of TNHunter will be nice due to the possibility of an early frost.
I cant really find a flaw in it… if u are into a bright red berry that is sweet and ripens very early and misses the early frost on the later crop…as well as having high yield.
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There is a YT Vid on Obsidian Blackberries… only one that I have found… link below…
That dude is growing them in Oregon.
Early in the vid he zooms in and shows close up of berries and leaves… his leaves look more normal than mine do, but still have some of that (scrunched up) look to them.
I have not noticed psyllids on them… hate those things… they are very hard on new persimmon grafts… the persimmon psyllids are… a couple of my new persimmon grafts failed this spring because constant attack of those dang psyllids.
I have noticed some leaf scrunching on my Illini canes too… not all but some. I am going to get some Captain Jacks Deadbug and give them a dose of Spinosad. I read that it works well on persimmon psyllids… should work well on blackberry psyllids too.
That Vintage raspberry does sound good… larger berries, sweeter, stronger canes, less seeds as well.
I could care less about the seeds… I have never even noticed seeds in Heritage… but larger sweeter berries would be nice, and stronger canes. If they were just extra thorny… I would like them better.
It sounds like they might be similar to Joan J to me… larger sweeter producing earlier/longer.
My JJ cane is looking quite vigorous, stout. My JJ looks like it will start ripening fall pcane berries at least a couple weeks ahead of Heritage. So yes JJ and Vintage sound very similar to me.
Could be a flavor difference… that I might like better… will have to grow one or two and find out.
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Hi. Any thoughts on how good the spring/floricane crop is and how the timing relates to other varieties. I’m considering taking out my Preludes that have gotten a little anemic and smaller over time and renovating the bed to plant Crimson Night, but the spring crop is my primary objective.
I’ve been very happy with Prelude over the years with its productivity and flavor. It is tarter than some, but we’re okay with that since we use them a lot for jam. But maybe it is time for a change.
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For me CN is about 8-10 days later than Caroline and crop is lighter. They finished up about the same time, CN maybe 2-3 days later than caroline, so shorter run as well. Taste wise very nice and i find them less
seedy. I would say stronger berry taste vs prelude.
I wish i had a bit more space for it to compensate for its lighter crop but its mid-row.
Not a workhorse like Caroline (my freezer-filler) but i enjoy the fruit a lot. Bit more compact than other reds i have had, less long skinny laterals.
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More detail on Obsidian: My canes would put out a foot or two of normal growth, but would repeatedly revert to feet of stunted, wrinkly leaves. Other blackberry varieties crammed in nearby were unaffected. I can’t remember if the Obsidian fruited from the stunted sections.
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@TNHunter and @LarryGene
I found this post from 10 years ago and it looks as if the leaf curl was common to the Obsidian even then.
There are so many posters who have the leaf curl on just Obsidian, it seems to be inherent to the variety. Or, as was mentioned, a virus that got propagated. If you hadn’t said that yours were clean of insect signs, I would have suggested that psyllid just found it particularly tasty.
I think i got it wrong with the psyllid… i think its leaf curl virus. And i think that the propagator has been propagating the virus… thats the only explanation for over a decade of the same symptom on the same plant to me. 3 of us on here have the same symptoms…and i ordered plants from California from a completely different vendor and have the same outcome as one of the few sellers of this One Green World. The post from a decade ago bought plants from Raintree.
I dont think that a fellow in the PNW, a fellow in TN and a fellow in WV all got aphid or psyllids on just this plant as soon as it was planted…that to me seems too rare of odds…plus the possible reports of the same thing over a decade ago from fellows in MD and other Eastern US states.
As for the treatment? Outcome?
Stark says to destroy the plants.
Univ of Illinois says its not really a big deal…and rare. (which i think it is also if not for the possibility of the propagator propagating a plant with a virus)…
IF it is this virus then the Small Raspberry Aphid can transmit the disease…to our other plants.
https://blogs.cornell.edu/berrytool/raspberries/raspberries-leaves-are-curled-rolled-or-crinkled/
The USDA says that this virus can kill a plant in 3 years.
https://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/publication/?seqNo115=339622
So its either psyllid or this raspberry leaf curl virus… i think we can deal with psyllid but not the RLC virus.
Regardless i think that its obvious that the propagator is selling virused plants to nurseries. And has been doing so for a long time.
I dont see how 3 different nurseries all got either aphid or psyllid infections on every batch of plants for over a decade either.
The only logical conclusion for me is that we are all planting virused plants of Obsidian that i dont think will have any kind of positive outcome…
Here is a very unseen video of Obsidian…which still makes me want to grow it… his plants look flawless.
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¿Are there any primocane-fruiting western Ursinus-type blackberry varieties, or are all the current primocanes eastern Fruticosus types?
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Maybe next year…
Thunderhead is a release by the USDA Oregon. Unknown when and if it will be released for sale.
If u want to go thru all the upcoming releases and some current ones you can look at their patent info here
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