Hello neighbor! Southern York county here, zone 7a/b.
I’m growing Caroline red raspberry, Anne golden raspberry, and Jewel black raspberry. I have a thornless blackberry which I don’t know a cultivar name for. It suffers from SWD, but the raspberries do well, except for the Jewel, which is just much less vigorous than the other two.
For black currant, I have Titania, Lewis R, Nancy May, Minaj Smeriou, and Black BMW. All black currants seem to have no trouble here. I also have Jonakeer van Tets red currant and it has consistently defoliated the last couple years in the summer and has never born fruit yet. It does continue to get larger in size however so I’m leaving it alone.
I also have a wild Ribes rotundifolium from seed collected at a bald in NC and those are all doing well.
I don’t know my blueberry cultivars as they were planted by the previous owner but I believe one of them is Jersey. It does well.
I’m up in moco and my Glendale, poorman, and pixwell gooseberries are doing great. I also have a mislabeled probably jostaberry possibly (supposed to be black velvet but isn’t) that’s doing fine … Also have a Crandall currant that’s doing great.
My Primus, red lake, and belorouskaya(sp) are doing ok. Just barely grew any. Still alive tho.
Things I planted late in the season so can’t really determine are real black velvet (seemed to do fine) hinnomaki yellow. The 2 colossal I planted died. Not sure if was the heat with the late planting or something else. I plan to plant them again tho.
I also planted a boysenberry very late as well. So will see if it comes back in the spring
I’m curious, are your blackberries primocane fruiting? I always thought SWD was a late season pest. Though, maybe they haven’t found me just yet. I’ll have to look more into prevention of those.
Thank you both for the info on the currants too. Do either of you have any white pines in your area? And if you do, do you notice any issues with White Pine Blister Rust?
EJh, good luck with the Boysens! I was thinking of planting some of those in the spring, myself.
@carya 's blackberry that was there before them, is likely to be Triple Crown, which is a very popular variety that has been around for a while. It is a floricane fruiting variety. It is falling out of favor since the fruiting window is later than other new varieties like Ponca, Caddo, etc., so it is much more likely to be hit by SWD. I don’t have any SWD issues with my Ponca and Caddo.
Since you have Triple Crown you could have issues if the SWD find you. The Arapaho should be early enough to avoid them. Not sure about Sweetie Pie.
Ok. That makes sense. Last year was the first year I got fruit off my Arapahos and that was toward the middle to end of June. The tripple crowns haven’t fruited yet and the sweetie pies haven’t got large enough to fruit due to deer pressure (my fault, I need to get fencing up). Definitely sounds like earlier fruiting is the way to go.
After years of fighting wildlife to get my little share, I wish I had started out with all early fruiting varieties for everything. As the season warms up and there is less from the spring flush to feed the wildlife, they get more and more aggressive. I got a lot of nice early apricots last year, but apples, pears and my peaches were all stolen by the end of the summer, most well before they were close to ripe.
I haven’t noticed any wpbr on anything. Not too many evergreens around me honestly just a few here and there. Poorman has been my best growing and it is South West facing. So it gets a ton of direct sun(I do water stuff during the summer when it gets too hot). It still has a few leaves clinging to it which is crazy. But we’ve also had that good ol MD weather.
The boysens have awful thorns just as a fair warning if you grow them.
It’s the blueberries which came with the land here, the thornless blackberries i planted. I just don’t know what cultivar they are. Someone gave them to me. The SWD isn’t severe on them but it’s there. It’s a primocane variety. Very thick fleshy green stems, huge size, big leaves, big fruits.
There are white pine around here but I’ve never had an issue with WPBR on the currants.
Afternoon… I just sort of stumbled on this forum and have been reading through it over the last day or two. I live in Northern Virginia (7(a)) on 7 acres and am preparing to plant four apple trees w/in an enclosed garden area: 2 Empire and 2 Fuji. I’m purchasing the fuji from Cummins Nursery and the Empire from Stark Brothers nursery. I believe these two varieties will be excellent pollinators to each other. Any reason I should veer away from either of these two varietals? Thanks!
Is there anyone here growing loquats on the east coast? Some are supposedly Hardy to 7a or can be grown in a container but I’m not sure how good the fruit would be. Anyone with experience?
Same for feijoas or ugni molinae ( Chilean guava)?
I’ve been growing loquat in southern VA since a week ago when my trade arrived lol!
Gknight on the outer banks of NC grows them. He’s only a hair south of me, but his temps are buffered by the water around him. I think he’s actually zone 9a. I’m much farther inland and a 7b
My plan is to try both in ground and in an ingested greenhouse and see what happens. Hopefully I can cover and perhaps run Christmas lights the worst few nights of the year.
They’re seedlings. They’ll get grafted over probably. Not sure with what. What I read led me to believe root hardiness would be the easy part, so I wasn’t picky about rootstock. Holding fruit will be the trick. Unless I hear something great about a variety I’ll probably just graft whatever is available.
Thanks! I should probably let you know the seedlings are like 6” tall though. It’ll be a while before I have a meaningful report. That said I’m excited to see what happens!