How Are the Brambles Doing After the Winter?

Thanks Drew, fruitnut. Pictures are very helpful. I plan to grow thornless boysenberry in pot like that. But have never imaged to grow semi erect blackberry in a pot. It looks like a monster in the garage. :alien:

Just a follow up on the hardiness of Natchez blackberry. I called Willie orchard where I ordered this and talked to Jay just to confirm their information is accurate. On their website, it is rate zone 4+. Jay said rated zone 4 is accurate from USDA and he knows someone grows this variety in NY without problem. So I guess I will give it a try to plan it in ground and see if it dies this coming winter.

All my blackberries died back to the snowline. This is the first time I’ve noticed any die-back in the 5 year’s I’ve grown them.

Luckily the snow was 2-3’ high at the coldest part of the winter. So, maybe I can still get some berries from what is left of the floricanes.

Coldest temp: -9F
Cultivars: TripleCrown, Ouachita, Prime Jan (which I removed most of anyways to make room for early season erect thornless varieties)

Boysenberry and Newberry were both fine, as they were on the ground under the snow.

In fact, I should get more Boysenberry than in past years since I had an escapee from a pot which grew more than 10 feet and spend the winter in a coil under some woodchips.

Here is the tallest live part of a Triple Crown (about 2.5’).

Sounds like a snake berry. :smile: :wink:

1 Like

I sprayed all my canes with wilt stop and it seems to have worked. 2 years ago all my canes died to the ground, this winter they did not. Only about 10-15% died back, and it was colder!
Here’s my TC. Leaves are a little yellow from my dog over-feeding them. The rains have greened them up, it looks a lot better now. Plus my dog found a new spot to water!
.

Chester

Those look pretty trailing- did you have them under the snow-cover this year?

Kiowa blackberries here, and some unnamed black raspberries from a friend.
Huge bumper crop of Kiowa last year; had great expectations for 2015…as I had great primocanes that I topped & maintained properly(for once). I didn’t really think winter 2014-15 was as bad as 2013-14, but I must have been wrong. Two snow events in Jan/Feb… with a couple of nights of -10F or colder during the second one…Kiowas were all killed back to the snowline…which was only about 6".
Raspberries seem to be OK.

I have Triple crown and Chester. About 50% of branches did not make through winter. I am new to growing blackberries and the way they died seems very strange to me. The canes looked alive in the spring and I have some canes which still look alive right now. But all the buds were dead on them and they did not sprout leaves. Some canes had sprouted leaves from the couple buds on top but the main part of the cane is bare. Another interesting thing is that I protected most of the canes during the winter. They were laying on the ground, some wrapped in paper, some covered by leaves. The most upright part of the Triple Crown stayed unprotected. The dead buds injury randomly appeared on all canes, protected and unprotected. Some unprotected canes are doing better then protected ones. And we did not have very cold winter, the minimal temperatures were about 0F. This is why I am wondering can this type of injury caused by the November hard freeze that we had last year? At that time blackberries were fully leafed and seemed actively growing.

Not so much, less snow this year. the fence in front is 4 feet, so they are not that trailing. You can see Chester in the other photo is over it. I covered with burlap too, but it was done poorly. I didn’t spray my trailing which were under leaves, and snow, and they also survived, but I lost a lot of whole canes. This year I will spray the tailing types before I cover them.
This is Triple Crown again from ground level.

Drew, you have me sold, I will try it this winter. My blackberries actually did pretty well last winter as I have weeded out less hardy ones, but I did lose some canes. But my main hope is for my figs and poms, which all died to the ground.

I used it on all my trees, and I did have some dieback on the Nectaplum, but 2 years ago it died back to just above the rootstock. i was lucky to still have a tree. This year the tips of three main scaffolds died back, the scaffold themselves are fine. I did have blooms too, and it was colder last winter. Although it appears some of the blooms, well most are not producing fruit, so they are damaged. Some fruit though is forming on other peach trees.
I can’t say for sure it’s the wilt stop that helped. Appears that way. It’s worth trying anyway. -16F should have killed all the fruit buds, yet some are forming fruit. Some were dead, some could only produce a flower.
I sprayed twice, once in the fall, and in December we had a 40F day so i sprayed again.
Navaho two years ago died to the ground and nothing was coming up. I thought the crown died too. But in July it at last started sending some canes up. They only grew to 2.5 feet tall before the end of the season. I sprayed them and they lived and I’ll get a small crop off of them.
Nu Film 17 is the same product. If Wilt Stop and Nu Film are the same percentage of pinene, you could use that instead. Just use the suggested amount per gallon as Wilt Stop ( a 1 to 5 ratio, 5 parts water to 1 of Wilt Stop). I have both, but didn’t compare them. OK, i just did, and Nu Film does not give you percentage of pinene. Wilt Stop is 25%.

Here’s links to labels if you want to check out these product labels
http://www.bonide.com/lbonide/backlabels/l101.pdf
http://www.pestrong.com/file/645-Nu%20Film%2017%20LABEL

Sounds like a nice product- I’d be very interested if it also protects figs, muscadines, persimmons, etc. Hopefully Scott also has good success with this. I may give it a try, but he’s got a much longer baseline to compare it against.

One addition to my results. I was going though a second row of Triple Crown to remove damage and noticed a single plant which had high growth (5ft vs 2ft for the plants around it) and only minor die-back. The outlier with far less damage is an Apache, which I had almost forgotten I had (TC has better flavor). Strangely, it should be more susceptible to winter damage (rated to zone 6, while TC is zone 5, by both Edible Landscaping and Raintree).

Here we got to -16F! Yet the plants look fine. Wilt Stop appears to have worked.
Bob your low was -9 and mine was -16 and yet more of my canes lived. Says it all.
My peach trees are setting fruit. I’ll be spraying them again. MSU says all should be dead at -14. I heard that if you can keep a fig tree from damage for 5-7 years the trunk will be thick enough not to need protection. It’s worth trying the pay off could be huge.

Nope. The previous winter I had 10-year figs all killed to the ground. They had some massive trunks on them.

After I wrote that I figured it wasn’t true! I’m going for one hardy type, and small ones for pot culture. I really only want two.