@steveb4 -43 yikes… you need to head south for the winter.
I saw -17 here in TN once… back in the 80’s… but it is rare for us to get in the negative numbers.
Two African Lions that were kept in my County back then… had been living here for 10+ years… but after that -17 they both died a couple weeks later from pneumonia. Sad.
You must have some TUF critters up there.
does pense mention if the plant they are selling is TC or bareroot on their website? what nursery do you recommend for blackberry plants?
I never really thought of starting blackberries by root cuttings alone… but checked youtube last night and found several folks showing how to do that… and they all were doing what Fusion suggested… a simple trench and just laying the root cuttings in it, watering, coving with dirt a few inches.
I did not see any follow up vids on that but one guy said they would be up in just a few weeks.
One of the guys had purchased a bundle of blackberry root cuttings from a Nursery… I think he said Nourse… or it may have been Pense… and they were quite inexpensive compared to blackberry plants.
I did a google search on blackberry root cuttings and found this on the Pense site.
…
Blackberry Root Cuttings, Another option for your planting needs is to plant the root cutting of a Blackberry plant. The roots we use are from tissue culture Blackberry plants, these are the most vigorous and healthy rooting you can get. The root cutting has a live percentage of 60 to 80 percent. We only sell roots in lots of 100 cuttings priced at $68.00. Please note in the order comment option list the name of the variety you want, cuttings are available in these varieties. Apache, Arapaho, Ouachita, Osage.
…
If you were going to go big on planting a lot of blackberries… that would sure cut the cost.
Have you ever tried to get rid of wild blackberries? If you don’t basically pull up all the roots, you’ll have 5 new plants for every 1 you’re trying to get rid of 
moose and bear country. big animals handle the cold better.
All of the bareroot plants I got from Pense were good. The Website did not identify which were bareroot and which were tissue culture. I have bought TC before from other sources and they grew like crazy but what Pense shipped looked like green algae growing on them and were stunted.
I would call and verify what he is shipping
Nourse sells TC in smaller quantities and Agristarts sells only to commercial growers. I believe their minimum is two trays of about 75 each
Root cuttings used to be popular with commercial growers a long time ago but most have moved to TC plants.
Ive sent you a couple of PMs over the weekend along with my address but havent heard anything back from you.
Yes… I did get your address and will get those illini roots out to you soon.
It may be this weekend before I can make the time to dig those up.
I will post a Pic here of them once I do that and let you know.
I watched a YT Vid this week where a guy had taken a old/mature blackberry plant from his Dads farm, and just dug up as much of it as he could… and it had a BUNCH of roots on it. He took all those roots and cut them up and planted them to start his own patch.
My Ilinni blackberries have had deep bark mulch around them for a LONG time… should be pretty easy to find a few good roots in there.
TNHunter
A few of years ago i bought 10 TC plants from Double A Vineyards. The roots were 3-5 feet long. I gave each plant a haircut and ended up with over 100 plants from those root cuttings. I think i could have had 150 plants easily.
I gave alot of them away but put the rest of them on consignment at a local nursery.
Everyone wants to do tip rooting for propagation…which is fine but if you want alot of plants pretty easily just dig up 1 plant and give it a haircut.
You can do the same thing with Raspberries. I experimented with some really small spaghetti sized roots in red solo cups and all of them gave new plants.
Another technique is to run a shovel in circumference of a plant. Each root that gets severed will put up a new plant…without having to dig the plant up… so if you want say 5-10 plants with little effort just sever the roots with a shovel and dig them up and plant in the row.
I recently bought some of Clarks Heirloom plants and gave them haircuts… i should get 30 or more plants out of those cuttings.
I am experimenting now with dormant cane cuttings… i have them all horizontally buried under the soil. I have seen pictures and video of that process working and am curious as to the success rate. Ive tried it twice and failed…but both times the canes werent dormant.
Pls explain more what happens after the haircut.
Some bare root shippers trim the roots before shipping… it does no real harm.
Lets say i wanted to turn 1 blackberry plant into hundreds- Easiest way would be to have a bathtub sized container or a bed that had very sandy loamy rich soil.
Each fall after complete dormancy…pull the entire root system out and trim the whole root system back. Leaving you with hundreds of root cuttings. Replant the plant.
Store root cuttings in fridge or cooler until ready to plant or pot up.
If you want more plants do it again next fall.
The mother plant will not yield much if at all… it will send most of its energy to roots… so only consider this for a donor plant.
I recently dug up a mystery blackberry plant at an Estate sale. The canes were about 20 feet long and laterals over 10 feet long and had sent tip roots over a fence and down a hillside. I gave the owner $10…and they said to take them all. The main cane was about 3 inches thick and had roots the size of large carrots… The root ball could have fit in a kiddie pool with ease. I had no choice but to trim the roots. Whoever buys the house next will have a blackberry patch because i severed so many roots… I think i ended up with about 15 plants and gave up. I cold barely carry the main root ball.
In case you are wondering- this amazing plant had no mulch, no fertilizers, no attention whatsoever. The owner had planted it years ago behind a garage and forgot about it.
My best guess is that its Natchez.
I have a question someone on here may be able to answer.
30 years ago, I purchased Shawnee blackberry plants and was amazed at the production and size. Since then, other varieties have been released that are larger (Kiowa), but none I know of are more productive. Why did Shawnee fall out of favor with growers?
Hey @Fusion_power ---- found this online…
Highly Susceptible to Double Blossom (Rosette)… as my Illini Hardy are as well…
They pretty much bred that out of the newer varieties.
That could be part of it anyway…
Even with the Double Blossom my Illini Hardy still produce a lot of nice berries… probably at least 2/3 or 3/4 of what they did originally.
When I realized what it was that my Illini Hardy had… I started a row of Ouachita (Resistant)… to make sure I would have some blackberries. I was a bit worried that it might eventually kill my Illini, but it has not, only minimally affects them.
Maybe because it’s a thorny variety, and folks are wanting thornless nowadays? It’s not susceptible to orange rust, so that’s not it.
I did see that TyTy nursery still sells it, so…go for it! Or not…
I have Shawnee, Cheyenne, Chicasaw and Cherokee. I may get Choctaw and Comanche.
To answer your question for the most part- capitalism.
When the patent end date nears… then the universities/usda etc start phasing them out in the US. No royalties…
I have even saw wording from Dr. Clark that they are ‘obsolete’.
In the last decade Univ of Ark has released alot of varieties…and want your attention on those…not the older older ones. For royalties…
Prime Ark 45- they are selling gazillions of those all over the world… but its a lesser plant than Chicasaw… but they sold gazillions of those back in the day too.
New Coke was not better than old Coke. But they gave it a heck of a try.
To confirm that…
If you read this article
http://www.raspberryblackberry.com/wp-content/uploads/Blackberry-Varieties-focus-on-eastern-US-Clark.pdf
Clark admits to to selling over 3 million Prime Ark 45 in 2010-2018.
He goes on to skip these…as if they are unworthy of discussion.
Comanche
• Cherokee
• Cheyenne
• Shawnee
• Choctaw
• Arapaho
• Chickasaw
• Darrow
• Doyle’s Thornless
• Illini Hardy
• Black Satin
• Hull Thornless
• Dirksen Thornless
• Brazos
• Rosborough
• Womack
• Brison
• Tupy
A very rare mention of Black Magic and Black Gem in this article as well…
Black Magic- Gurneys.
Black Gem- Stark.
I believe U of Ark sold the rights exclusively to them in order to not compete with PA Freedom. Which one would you choose if you had 3 choices of nearly the exact same plant? Maybe they are all PA Freedom?
Does anybody know any Canadian nurseries that sell some of these harder to find varieties? I’ve been looking for Chickasaw but no luck so far. Prime Ark, Chester and Balsor’s are the main ones that I see advertised.
You guys have stuff that i cant get…we have stuff that you cant get. Europe has all kinds of stuff i want…
Between TyTy and thier fake sister sites they list most of them. I ordered one variety and after 3 months of waiting they sent me a thornless. With a little BS they sent me a thorny plant… i will not know for a couple of years if it is right either. It could be Kiowa for all i know.
There is a Shawnee listed on Ebay for $50 for one plant… which is a safer bet than TyTy
