Here is the paper for Obsidian… looks to be pretty cold hardy. Its not patented.
As far as i can tell and ive tried…its unobtainable…but i can try to get a tray of them ordered… would have to sell the ones i dont use.
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@krismoriah … sell me a couple please… if you can get them. I would love to give them a try here.
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I guess my emailing worked…they are available to buy now…
I am going to send you a PM so that you get them first…they only have a few in stock. After you order you can post here where to buy them.
thats insane fruiting!
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im z4 as well and we get alot of snow. im trailing 3 semierect and trailing z5 blackberries. triple crown, chester and columbian giant. ill cover them with heavy synthetic blankets then a tarp at the beginning of November. they should do fine that way under the snow.
That’s pretty much what I have as well. Last year I put used lots of hay and covered them with a tarp. Now I’m adding a frost cloth for the more sensitive plants.
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Just got off work and checked here…
Thanks @krismoriah
Got me a couple ordered… from One Green World.
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I have a few plants going from a friend in Vermont. They are 3B/4A and these things grow to be monsters. Anyways they have been in the same location for 50-60 years and always flower and fruit… and there has been some nasty winters in there. Could be a seedling or something that the previous owner picked up in his travels.
They are thorny dont know if thats your thing…but need no help in the cold. Big berries as well.
Im also trying Lawton. It is supposedly very cold hardy as well. Big berries on it too. It started out being called Seacor’s Mammoth. History is believed to be from a seedling of the French Hugenots from the late 1600s… Has inch long berries.
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i have Nelsons from fedco. they survived -40f above the snow last winter. berries are small 1in. but very productive. have huge thorny canes. if i can get berries on thornless, id prefer it. they draw blood every time i pick or mow by them. their armament is impressive!
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Siskiyou Blackberry-
I have asked everyone on social media in my groups… i have talked to the plant propagators…and also the vendors that sell the plants… likely it wont be coming back.
It is not patented… yet the people that do have it are afraid of propagating it… or just dont want to.
If you have this plant please send me a PM if you can send me some plants to grow here. I will propagate them in the future for people that cannot find them by any other means.
Otherwise i think this plant is lost to backyard growers…
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Now that I have a couple of Obsidian blackberry plants on the way… I went back and re-read a very detailed document from HortScience/Chad Finn - Looks like it dates back to 2005 or so.
Several popular varieties are compared from that time, including Marion, Silvan… and the previous most popular early season blackberry Siskiyou.
Note on the ripening dates… that is in Oregon… so for me they will be about a month earlier than the dates from Oregon. Should start ripening for me end of May… and thru June… and be done before SWD get bad here.
No great details on cold hardiness… but they did compare it to Marion and it was unharmed when Marion suffered winter injury.
Going to get out today and prep a place for planting Obsidian…
Beautiful sunny, cool fall day here.
@krismoriah – looks like around 2005 Obsidian and possibly other (very early) varieties may have bumped Siskiyou out of popularity. Prior to that it was very popular as the “early variety”… but that evidently did not last.
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Nice berries. Is Galaxy still your top pick out of all the ones you grow?
Siskiyou was rated 2 on flavor (Marion got #1)… of that group anyway…
But I expect it was Yield that made it much less popular going forward than the other newer very early varieties. The yield of Siskiyou was less than Half that of Obsidian.
Looks like berry size is very similar…
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not sure if it was meant for me…but no not really. My ‘new’ thornless one that i talked about earlier is my favorite as far as east coast type black berries.
Galaxy is a mix of Illini Hardy, Chester and Triple Crown… so you can expect it to be cold hardy…productive and vigorous. However with those parents the taste will likely be fairly common.
I am kinda new to ‘west coast’ varieties…and the pics i post are under ideal conditions in the Willamette Valley region of OR. My pics or yields will never look like those… and i suspect i will lose alot of cane growth due to a bad winter eventually… if not sooner or later… its my hobby and if i get a quart per plant that will be fine with me.
Hybrids are probably my favorite… the concoctions of blackberries/raspberries etc.
The galaxy plants that i got are doing their first year ‘sprawling’ that east coast varieties like to do… tiny skinny canes that are floppy. Next year will be the opposite.
My favorite ones to grow are thorny. If you ever get a chance to taste alot of varieties…there is a taste in the thornless one that is hard to describe. Once you taste it vs a thorny one it kind of puts a memory in your brain.
Triple Crown- If you give one to someone who is used to eating store bought ones or wild ones they will think its great… and rave about it. If you let them taste an Osage or Apache they will not want another Triple Crown. I used to like TC… but to me now its a boring berry that is just alot of work. I expect Galaxy to be the same.
I have about 30 or 40 varieties that i have not even tasted yet… i have probably the largest collection of varieties on Earth… from all over the world. Im in unknown waters on alot of them.
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@krismoriah I don’t mind thorns. Which one is your absolute overall favorite thorned variety? I’ll be looking to eventually add some blackberries to my raspberries (I have Crimson Night and Latham), blueberries (Patriot, BlueRay, BlueCrop and Northsky) and thorned boysenberries.
As of right now Chickasaw. It was once called the ‘cabernet’ of blackberries…like marion still is. It doesnt have that ‘thornless’ taste. Once a favorite of U-pick and commerical production…they have phased it out so that it doesnt compete with the new varieties that they need to make money from. They use words like ‘obsolete’ to describe it… not true…its still worth growing.
I will likely have a different answer next year as i have other varieties growing that have potential.
If you want to get super serious on the thorned ones… Get you a Healthberry from 39th Parallel Nursery…Its Clarks family heirloom. Ive never seen a more nasty plant in my life (in a good way). God help anyone that wants to try to tame it. Its DNA must be from something found in dinosaur poop… its not meant for humans to get near it. I really respect this plant… I want one planted on my grave.
I will have a purple raspberry available next year i think. After you have a purple one the red and the black ones are kinda not cool anymore.
If you want one red raspberry…cascade delight is probably hard to beat.
Here is the purple. Its hardy to Z1 alaska. Intense flavor but does not spread. Acts like a thorny blackberry.
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im really interested in that purple. do you grow the thornless loganberry also? id like to try both of those. id send you some Columbian giant cuttings and yellow black raspberry cuttings from Drews plant for some of those so i can stick them in ground before my ground freezes so they root over winter. let me know.
I dont but TNHunter does. I have the thorny one that is tough to find.
There is a thornless marion out there somewhere…and a thornless Tay that somebody will have to smuggle for us to have.
Clarks family’s blackberry sounds like my Nelsons. ive seen some wild blackberries in s. Maine. none like the Nelsons. 1in. long thorns every 1/2in from top to bottom. even the leaves had thorns. i cut a few canes of it and put it in with my goats. they ate the center of the leaves but left the thorny ribs and stalks. if a goat wont eat it nothing will!
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