Blackberries, Raspberries and Hybrids

Agree with melon. Brambles aren’t picky at all when it comes to soils as long as they aren’t underwater, save more complicated soil mixes for things that care

6 Likes

well Home Depot had a variety that I didn’t, so I came home with a Black Satin.
send help… there’s no more room in my back yard

2 Likes

also - who can help me unravel this mystery… “Meeker Black” ?

3 Likes

On a side note, i love those tags

2 Likes

im giving it a go myself… very old posts and reviews say its terrible… yet newer growers say that its sweet and tastes good… and its still going strong in the nurseries. Its late ripening which U of Ark says that folks have been asking for (Immaculate)… yet Black Satin is much more popular than Immaculate on recent posts and reviews.

Meeker (red) raspberry is from the 1960s and was a workhorse of the PNW back then…but has fallen out of favor with many other new releases with larger berries and higher yields etc.

Same can be said for Heritage here on the east coast but its still good to grow.

4 Likes

Same but my garage. Ready to sell some soon.

Only the best plants from Saturday Night Live. :wink:

The canes would be reddish purple if it was actually a black raspberry.

3 Likes

2021-2024 I have been getting 35-40 pounds of Meeker red raspberries per year from a 15-foot row. Excellent flavor.

3 Likes

Yes it can be a real workhorse (if/when its disease free).

https://magazine.wsu.edu/2012/04/26/raspberries/

yes, like RobertH said, I was confused because the tag said “Meeker Black” :grin:

Black Satin has unfortunately been terrible for me. Consistently very sour and a strange taste. The only berries I had that were tolerable were so ripe and mushy you could barely pull them off without squishing them. I’m giving mine one more chance this year before removing it because I don’t like to judge a plant too decisively in its first year, but I’m not very optimistic about it.

1 Like

omg… i’m completely out of room and I just got a notification from Burpees that my order is shipping. An order that I completely forgot about, apparently I ordered it over thanksgiving break while bored at the in-laws house

my wife is going to kill me

image
image

11 Likes

Enjoy! I think you’ll be happy with Osage. It has good sweetness for a blackberry. It’s flower is my profile photo.

4 Likes

In that case, maybe it’s time to turn the gutters into a hanging planter box. She’ll never see it coming.

2 Likes

Wow, I can’t believe I didnt see this thread sooner! I just finished going through years of posts and I am almost blown away and quite excited to add a few varieties of blackberries to my collection of edibles!

I’ve always said I won’t buy things that will shank and poke me but y’all have changed my mind!

That being said, I do have 3 varieties of raspberry in pots. One gold, and two red.

One red I dug up from a community garden that was being shut down. It has large, juicy berries.
The second red has smaller, darker colored berries, a bit more tart.
I have a tag on the gold, but don’t remember the name at the moment.

I guess I missed out on signing up to get some blackberries last fall, so please put me on the list for Siskiyou, Prime Ark, and Victory!
If possible please. :slight_smile:

P.S. I guess it never really occured to me to grow blackberries since I am in WA. I have fond memories of going out in with my Dad to pick blackberries since I was little!

6 Likes

I may have extra honey jewel yellow and ruby jewel red as well as others once they start popping up.

Trade 4 eggs in the future? :grin:

4 Likes

I think i have a couple of siskiyou and victory left. I dont deal with the primearks or anything that is readily available in nurseries… only ones that are not sold at nurseries… this is just my hobby not a business or anything.

3 Likes

Sounds like a plan!

I wasn’t sure on the Prime Ark but it was in my notes as one to try. What would you suggest instead?
I am much more intersted in uncommon varieties and ones you can’t go out and find easily. Especially if they taste different!

1 Like

Thorny Boysen- with the right growing condtions and for me some years better than others… are hard to beat. However if you grow Newberry there is no comparison. Newberry didnt get any patent and the folks that trialed it ran with it further than expected… so it never really had a market from the USDA perspective. I think Chad Finn perfected the hybrid with this one.

Ollalie- may not win any taste tests due to its sweet then sour profile for fresh eating but really wakes up a pie or jam… i guess kind of like sour cherry jam does what it does. Probably not worth growing unless you plan on making alot of jams/jellies etc. Kotata does a better job with much more sweet and much more complexity. However it has the nastiest thorns of all the trailing ones. Probably why its gone from the trade.

Royalty purple- for me it just does everything right and makes me wonder why i grow most of my red rasps… and has made me delete almost all of my black rasps. Brandywine is also winning me over. Taste is subjective so my love for purple rasps may not win over die hard red or black rasp lovers but to me i think they are the best of both worlds.


These suggestions arent for everyone but are answers for some that enjoy growing uncommon ones-

Ebony King- Just does everything right for me for a blackberry. Some say that the old wild blackberries are the best… but they are too small and hunting them in the woods along with the ticks and chiggars and snakes just isnt worth it… well to me Ebony king is a tame(ish) wild blackberry that is pretty large. Sweet and sassy taste. These are at my local Walmarts now…other than that pretty obscure.

Cheyenne Blackberry- I would have to say this is a better Ebony King in some ways… larger berry and a magnificent thorny plant that has better genetics. However its not as tough as Ebony King as far as i can tell. Ebony King is the one you want to plant next to a fence and not really have to cultivate it.

Victory is probably my favorite although i think i am growing it incorrectly. I have it at 5 foot spacing and around 9 feet row spacing. I have to prune constantly for it to not take over completely. It is also my heaviest feeder. Many hundreds of pounds if not thousands of woodchips and manure disappear and right now it looks like a desert under them. This year is the first year i have pruned them the hardest i have pruned anything… so it will be a test to see how that works out for me. Last year i pruned them fairly hard and there were so many berries that my wires were strained to their maximum…even breaking some canes. One row i couldnt even walk through it engulfed itself. I picked as many gallons as i could handle as well as gave away buckets of them…and even had two neighbors that said No Mas! That still left me with berries unpicked which then probably led to my further demise of SWD breeding. I really think one crown with about 10 feet in all directions is what this plant needs…and that one crown would provide the same amount of fruit as my 15 plants that i have to constantly prune. IF i get around to it i think this is the one to do it with to make my ‘blackberry tree’… the canes get the size of baseball bat handles so i think it would work.

I cant mention Silvan yet because of my troubles with it… I lost almost all of my plants to voles in the beginning and had to start over… then the new place i planted them the RCBs had their way with them… so hopefully in the next year they will be strong enough to defend and make thicker canes. But so far i have struggled getting this one going.

With all that said… if i wasnt the way that i am i would probably just grow Apache blackberry, Caroline or one of its sisters for red rasps, Anne (bred by the same as Caroline and sisters) for a yellow, Royalty purple instead of blacks and most reds, and Siskiyou and Newberry just because they are so dang tasty. That would be probably just about perfect for any normal person. If i had room probably a Tayberry as well.

So in all truthfulness unless you are an explorer or hobbyist or have some kind of Burbank streak in you… most of the very good ones arent that obscure and are pretty available still to this day because they have stood the test of time.

10 Likes

The only place to get Cheyenne that I’ve seen is that ebay guy. However, the day I added in my Berrys Unlimited and eBay guy order into my collection, I got what I think is a blackberry virus, so it came from one of them. I know which one I suspect…

edit: although from my reading, apparently blackberry viruses are common and don’t produce any symptoms at all, until different viruses mix together into a virus complex. So that could also be what happened - perhaps I already had one, and adding in those new plants made them mix and show ringspots and leaf curl (or ‘spiral’ growing leaves). If this is indeed the case, then all the growers probably have no idea if they have one or not