I’m now looking at my 2020 caneberry log.
(Portland, Oregon: cool damp springs and hot dry summers. Summer does not typically begin until 2nd week of July!)
Columbia Star was harvested from 19 June to 6 July.
2019 harvest was 22 June to 11 July.
2020 thornless Logan was 1 June to 10 July.
There are of course some berries remaining after those dates but in insignificant quantities and are eaten during gardening chores.
What do you use for vacuum seal the jars?
Ks…
I have a food saver vacuum sealer… it has an accessory port that you can hook up a tube… that attaches to a vacuum sealer for Mason jars… works great.
If you YouTube vacuum sealing Mason jars… will find plenty of videos.
TNHunter
I’ve been interested in the Doyle Thornless Blackberry for a few years. Does anyone have experience with it?
Pense is fine i had a bad drought that wiped out most of the plants but thats our weathers fault not pense. I think their plants were healthy but half were small, half were medium to large.
June 11 2020… I had an excess of Logans… these got frozen.
That happened a lot in June last year, I froze a LOT.
I have 3 jars left in the freezer now.
TNHunter
Excuse me. But can you help a beginer? I try to find some og blackberry you have. Like Columbia Sunrise and Columbia Giant. Can you send me some seeds?
@NICARADU - sorry but I do not have either of those varieties.
I do have lots of wild blackberries on my place, and some growing in my orchard (Illini Hardy variety, and Ouachata).
I have had the Hardy Illini for near 20 years. the Ouachita are new (first crop ripening now).
If I was going to try a new Arkansas variety today, it would be Ponca, and possibly Caddo.
The Illini have been a very good berry for me for near 20 years. Taste very similar to wild blackberries, but are sweeter and much larger.
Good Luck
TNHunter
Caddo seems to be a good idea
I ate my first Illini and Ouachita berries yesterday 6/15/2021, right on time for the Illini, they are almost always ready Mid June… and these are my first Ouachita to taste…
Both were good for first berries. I wondered if I would like Ouachita, and so far (only a couple) but tasted good to me, quite sweet and some tart.
I am off work now, and going to see how many more there are this evening… more tasting coming up.
If I were to plant more soon, it would most likely be Caddo, Ponca… and I might try Obsidian…
Good Luck to you.
TNHunter
@subdood_ky_z6b — just noticed that that list that you provided earlier in this thread…
With ripening dates for the AR variety blackberries… showed Ouachita, first harvest 6/13
I picked my first Ouachita berries on 6/15 so their dates seem to be about dead on for southern middle TN too.
I am experiencing my first fruiting of thornless blackberries this year (Ouachita)… and man the birds are wearing them out. Most berries near the top (where birds can easily land) have been mauled by birds. They may take some completely off, but many are left and all the drupelets pecked to pulverization.
We have been harvesting some really nice berries down lower on the canes, in places I guess it was just harder for the birds to get to.
I put a bird net over the row this morning… hopefully that will help get us more and them less.
This is making me think twice about ordering any more thornless blackberries.
I have been spoiled for near 20 years with the Hardy Illini (which have some awesome thorns on them) and keep the birds and squirrels and any critter that might want to land or crawl on them away.
At least now I know that if I do try something like Ponca in the future, I am going to have to plan for bird netting, or my country birds are going to get most of them.
TNHunter
My Osage and Ouachita have more berries on them this year than they’ve ever had. They’re not quite ripe, maybe a couple weeks before the first ones will be ready. Also getting a few berries on the Freedom and Traveler plants.
I haven’t covered my berries in the past, but we’ll be getting more of a crop this year, so I may need to protect them somehow. I noticed some canes have some missing leaves on them but I’m suspecting deer browsing.
@Seattlefigs What about Kiowa tastes better than your thornless varieties? More complex or some acid to balance the sweet or ?
@hambone… I have this printout that I am sure came from a PDF that someone linked on this board… but at this point all I have is the print out… it list lots of blackberry varieties in groups… by type…
In the Erect and Semi Erect groups (cultivars) most listed are thorn less, but a few have thorns…
The list is from a few years back… does not include Ponca… but does include Ouachita, Osage
It describes the fruit, yield, plant and gives each a flavor rating for each
Erect
Natches - fair flavor
Ouachita - fair flavor
Osage - fair flavor
Apache - fair flavor
Illini - tends to be bitter
Navaho - good flavor — notice Navaho is the only Erect in that list they give a good flavor rating to.
Semi Erect
Loch Ness - fair flavor
Hull Thornless - fair flavor
Tripple Crown - good flavor — and only TC gets good flavor rating in this group.
Doyle’s Thornless - fair flavor
Black Satin - fair flavor
Chester Thornless - fair flavor
But in the Trailing blackberry cultivars… on all of these they state - Excellent Flavor
including… Obsidian, Metolius, Sillvan, Cascade, Olallie
Columbi Star gets a rating of Outstanding Flavor
Black Diamond gets - good flavor
Obsidian, Metolius, Silvan, Cascade and Olallie are described as either Vigorous Thorny, or Very Vigorous Thorny… and all get the Excellent Flavor rating.
Black Diamond - the only one described as “good flavor” is Vigorous ThornLESS
Getting rid of the thorns… reduced the flavor ?
But then…
Columbia Star - Very vigorous, ThornLESS… outstanding flavor.
Sounds like they are making progress there…
Obsidian is the earliest ripening blackberry in their Trailing Blackberry group… and I expect it would ripen in June for me (before SWD kicks in here). I am going to have to try one or two of those.
I may try some of the Columbia types too… Star, Giant, Sunrise…
I think personally the older thorned ones are very good… like Darrow… Thorned tend to be more hardy as well unless they are bred not to be like Brazos etc.
I think personally that flavor is sacrificed in the genetics… to get thornless that behave well. But if you do enough pruning its well worth the lack of thorns.
I plan on eventually getting a few Darrow plants back just for the hobby of it. They behave very well nice strong canes that are erect and just wanna push berries. A very good soldier. Supposedly good to -22F
I am working with a thornless now that is from Eastern Europe. Its never been released to the public only to production farms… and will be on par if not better than Triple Crown i hope. It will be 2 more years before i know how it acts and fruits here.
Big Daddy caught my interest at one time… not sure if its marketing hype.
Gurneys lists Black Magic as double cropping…so it must be a primocane fruiter as well… They list it as Z5… but also say it has light thorns.
Interesting- maybe that evaluator was in PNW.
Just got a note about Triple Crown problems from Blake Cothron at Peaceful Heritage Nursery in KY 6B:
“After growing Triple Crown and other cultivars for the past 8 years I’ve concluded Triple Crown is not very resilient in our region. It makes good berries and winter hardiness is not usually an issue, but after a few years time it seems to start to look shaggy and have a lot of dieback from insects and diseases. I’m getting rid of all or most of my TC vines. It gets rednecked borer damage badly.”
Drew, if you are wanting antioxidants I read recently that said honeyberries contain more antioxidants even than wild blueberries.
That list I would say is fairly accurate. Except I disagree about Columbia Star. I would not rate it excellent.
On the thorns and flavor there is some link. Ark. Blackberries all have an underlying taste when not fully ripe I do not like. Now the Oregon thornless don’t have this. Why? They use a different gene to achieve a thornless plant. Although this 2nd of three known genes that produce thornless plants does have flavor links too. Oregon’s best tasting blackberry in my opinion is new berry. It beats Columbia star easily. New berry has lots of thorns otherwise very similar linage. You can get hints of raspberry in very ripe berries. Outstanding!
i dont defend or deny this statement but plant health is mostly related to soil health. What works in one yard may not work in another. A healthy thriving plant in optimal soil will most of the times have strong defenses against pests and disease. Triple Crown is a reliable workhorse.
I really like Kiowa. It has been our best overall blackberry over the last 8 years of blackberry trials. It’s a monster, all around. So thorny deer won’t even touch it. Prolific production continues for about 6-8 weeks, starting for us in KY around mid-late June. Berries are a little on the tart side, but tons of flavor and good, quite sweet when dead ripe. But for production and resilience and berry size it’s a top choice. I don’t sell it because most people seem to want thornless ones and handling the vines to pack into boxes is unpleasant.
The next best one for us I would say is Chester. It’s an older one. The berries are good flavored, fairly sweet and it just makes tons and tons and tons of berries, for a very long time. Berry size decreases as the season progresses (something the Arkansas breeders focus on breeding out). But comparing it with all the other ones we grow, it is healthier, stout, and more productive than many others. Quite cold hardy too. Nothing flashy or amazing, it’s just resilient and productive and has a nice long season.
Prime Ark Freedom makes super, huge berries but it’s performance has been so-so over the last 2 seasons of fruiting. We’ll see. Flavor is good but on the milder side. Berries are impressively large and firm.
I planted Ponca and Caddo last year and so we’ll see how they do. I’ve been selling a lot of those.
Honestly, the longer I grow fruit (about 20 years now) the less I care about trying to host a techno party in my mouth. I just focus on fruits that will not be a pain to care for, are not going to spontaneously die or get attacked by hordes of insects, and will get through the winter. If it is tasty, productive, resistant, and survivable, that’s good enough for me! Kentucky is a very difficult place to grow most fruits, and I am not able to micro manage things on our scale. And, I know most of my customers are not wanting to or know how to manage growing most fruits, so I like to focus on EASY.