Yes, in 2015, I planted one of each:
Natchez
Arapaho
Osage
Prime Ark Freedom
This past summer, I got a decent amount from some of them. I remember that one was pretty good, one was horrible and 2 were just OK. But I didn’t take enough notes to know which was which. I’ll try to do better this coming summer.
I also planted several Caddo in a few locations 2 years ago and a handful of Ponca at another property this past year. So, more to come, but I don’t have a good answer right now.
Have you tried running really hot water on chigger bites? As hot as you can stand it for 1 to 2 seconds, pause a bit and repeat. It releases all the histamines and itching stops for me for 4 to 8 hours. Don’t burn yourself - not that hot.
Chiggars to me are a much milder itch, irritation… compared to seed ticks, or any tick bite… (much more intense, hard to resist scratching)…
Chiggars and Skeeters similar for me, but ticks… at another level.
Similar on Bee an Wasp Stings… compared to Yellow Jackets… the YJ is up a notch in intensity.
I do get poison ivy… normally when hunting ginseng… which often grows where PI grows… but I can resist it too… it itches for sure, but I know for sure if I scratch it, it it only going to get worse. I can usually just take a Benadryl tab for 3 or 4 days (before bed) and my PI gets better (with no scratching).
No doubt that varies by individual some…
Chiggers are weak little critters. They have to have restrictive clothing of some sort - socks, back of the knees of your pants, waistband of your undies, etc. that they can ‘push against’, in order to keep their mouthparts pressed against your skin. Their ‘saliva’ contains proteolytic enzymes that liquefy skin cells, and they essentially drink the resultant ‘protein smoothie’. Their saliva is very allergenic, causing that reddened, itchy spot… but for all intents and purposes, by the time you get that red, itchy chigger-bite lesion, the little critter has long since dropped off or been brushed away.
The old-timey ‘remedies’ of taking a bath in bleach water, or applying a drop of nail polish to each spot to ‘suffocate the chigger’ are wasted effort and ineffectual.
I’m with TNHunter… I’d rather have chigger bites any day to a bunch of ‘seed tick’ (up here, folks often call them ‘turkey mites’… but they are just larval ticks) bites.
Nobody here has mentioned Sweetie Pie thornless. I’ve got loads of wild blackberries on my property, but this winter I bought Ponca and Sweetie Pie to try out. Has anyone else tried that one yet?
(I’m not terribly far from TNHunter. He’s south of Nashville, and I’m east of Nashville by about 45 minutes.)
I grow it. It is sweet but gets boring pretty fast. Osage is sweet too but has a bit of tart that balances the flavor and tastes like a nice blackberry candy. I think sweetie pie is good for small kids, but after you have tasted more complex berries you wont want to eat it again.
Thanks for the input!
I wish the internet was available when i was a kid. My mom painted every little bump with nail polish… and you wasnt allowed to touch them either. Mom said thats the only way to kill them is to suffocate them. So they were painted in. I think i had over 30 or so on my boy parts and thank god i was allowed to paint them myself. Good times in the country.
I am laughing at all the chigger and tick talk. Like some of you, my mom was always in the “suffocate the chigger” school. She’d use nail polish, tape, or the sticky part of a band-aid.
Tick bites don’t bother me much. And these days I don’t even notice mosquito bites. But chiggers will irritate me for weeks. Yeeeeesh.
I see that the video uses some kind of ground anchor behind the V I’m guessing for tension. Do you have any problems with your u posts shifting over the years. I need to make a raspberry trellis this year.
I purchase screw in anchors from a local mobile home supply store and use them to anchor posts. When one of them is in the ground 3 feet deep, not much is going to budge it.
I have sweetie pie. Healthy , vigorous. Same growth pattern and same ripening time as triple crown but triple crown has superior flavor imo
@Piblarg … my trellis setup is much more minimalistic than theirs and that one I provided a pic of is a much smaller raspberry bed than they had. Their rows were very long and they may well need that extra tension.
I had great luck last year propagating raspberry… and had to spread them around to different areas of my food forest bed (between fruit trees)… in 2 places… and in that one bed pictured earlier. So it was just last spring and summer that I set those up. They have not been in use long term… and they were 6 to 8 ft long max.
For a smaller bed i think they will work fine. They seem pretty steady to me. They have been holding raspberries up most of the summer… fall and winter now and nothing has changed.
I do worry that a crazy deer may try to jump that and get tangled in the wire… that could happen. I saw a small buck run into a barbed wire fence once and break his neck.
If you were going to make some raspberry beds 30 40 50 ft long… I think you could still get by with u-post in the middle… perhaps one every 6 ft… but use t-post on the ends to keep the tension you need. Or you could use all t-post of you want… to beef it up more.
Good luck !
I don’t like the flavor of Kiowa as much, but that might be because I haven’t figured out how to pick them at the right stage yet.
Looking at my notes…the first blackberry I got was from Caddo on June 10th. I remember that Caddo did not produce much and I was very unimpressed. I was still picking blackberries on June 19th, but I didn’t list which varieties. A variety was still producing by July 21st. To be honest, they all seemed to produce at the same time. I didn’t take great notes on them, I was more interested in the raspberries…
I’m not sure if the notes would have been useful anyways. Last year we had some really weird weather with Winter Storm Uri. It made things late.
Univ of KY recent video and they recommend TC for KY.
It’s 400 miles from Ashland, in eastern KY, to Fulton, in western KY. The entire state is not ‘The Bluegrass’ of central KY. Heck, many folks in that so called ‘golden triangle’ area seem to think that once you get west of Elizabethtown, you’ve left Kentucky - but there’s actually another 200 miles to go!
UK Ag Extension doesn’t recommend rabbiteye blueberries… but I wouldn’t be without them here, and will likely never again bother with NHB types, as their productivity pales in comparison to a good Rabbiteye, here.
I look at UK recommendations, but I don’t take them as gospel.
If I relied on university recommendations only in the state I live for things I grow, I would have very little to grow.
One thing I have learned is to find which state has a university breeding program. Blackberries are UARK and UFL here in the southeast. Chilling requirements are an important aspect the further south they are grown.
Blueberries are in progress in Georgia. Alabama is beginning a program.
UK did have a containerized, in-ground blueberry trial in progress at the Princeton Ag. Education and Research Center, about 25 miles north of me, when the Dec 10-11 KY tornados swept right through the experiment station, destroying almost everything on that premises… it carried away quite a few BBs, and the rest, they gave away to folks who came in to help clean up in the aftermath. Don’t know if they were doing any rabbiteyes or not - or when/whether they’ll get around to re-starting that project.
Stumbled upon this nursery in Vermont selling cold hardy blackberry plants. 3 varieties ive not heard of. Somewhat expensive but possibly worth it to someone in a cold zone.
By far the best tasting variety I have tasted is Navaho. It ripens nearly a month earlier than any other variety that I have grown and the flavour is outstanding. Its sweet with almost no tartness and at times tastes like coca cola .