These two are amazing. This is third year producing fruit. Kiowa are much larger but has some vicious thorns. Both are super sweet with very mild tartness. Great for fresh eating and cobblers.
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Looks delicious! I hope my Osage set better than last year. Looking forward to berries in another month or so.
Nice. Those Kiowa berries are huge. Do they have any noticeable difference in taste, juice, etc?
My Osage has green and a few pink berries on it now, don’t have Kiowa, don’t like the thorns! Ouachita and Traveler have some green berries as well.
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Those look great and super huge.
I actually think the super large Kiowa are a bit sweeter but they are both very similar in flavor. Blind taste test would be tough to tell the difference.
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Are you saying the Kiowa are sweeter than Osage? Interesting. I think Osage is supposed to be the sweetest of the UA thornless varieties, but don’t know how it compares to Kiowa. About how long from bloom to ripe fruit for your Osage? Even though my Osage had some dieback, it’s responded by sending up some big canes, I just topped a couple of them at 5ft.
I have PA Freedom too, but no floricane fruit, the canes were winter killed, but have lots of primocanes. I just topped about 6-8 canes a few days ago. They had reached my 30" threshold, and I didn’t want them to get too tall, and wanted them to start sending out laterals.
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I grew Kiowa BB for a few years. They were huge, sweet, and delicious but I hated those vicious thorns. I moved my garden 7 years ago and left them behind. I’m now growing Natchez, PAF, Osage, and Sweetie Pie. I don’t miss Kiowa at all.
Long growing canes like Natchez and PAF are more productive and easier to care for if you prune 6 inches off the cane tips when they reach 4 ft
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Thick leather gloves are still no match for the Kiowa thorns…the leaves even hurt…ha.
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