Has anyone here tried growing either of these west coast thornless blackberry varieties in the south? I ask because I live on the 9a/8b line in Louisiana and just bought a couple of these as large plugs which I intend to add to my existing thornlesss blackberries (PAF, PAT, Osage, Ouachita, and Sweetie Pie). I know trying to grow a west coast blackberry in the south is a dice roll, though in this case the effective cost of trying was zero as I needed to add a few dollars to an order in order to use a discount coupon, so the bottom line cost on the order was a wash.
I tried and fried Columbia Star in my zone 7 yard (which is hotter by a zone or so in the summer due to microclimate). I spent many years trying many varieties of western berry and eventually gave up… they don’t like the heat.
The only western berries that work for me are some experimental hybrids with eastern. Looking them up now I see they recently named a few of them… see https://nwhortsoc.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Pat.pdf. Eclipse and Galaxy from those slides are two that I grew, both are reliable and can take the heat. They are 75% eastern and 25% western. They are not hugely better than other good blackberries though, e.g. Triple Crown and Osage are just about as good.
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Thanks I will try to plant them in a location that gets a bit of shade during the heat of the day and see if that helps.
My area had shade all afternoon. They did produce but not enough to make it worth it. I also had borer problems and on already weak plants that really sets them back.