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  • From: "Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>
  • To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] (NAFEX) Temperate berry crops
  • Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2007 07:40:13 -0600

Bill,
I'm pretty sure that Jim Fruth has blackberries up there in zone 3, so zone 5 shouldn't be that big a deal. I'm not sure red raspberries can take the heat and drought all that well. Comments anyone? The black raspberries do sort of ok here, but never the huge crops that blackberries serve up.
Here is a nice map and listings from Pense Nursery:
http://www.alcasoft.com/pense/success.html

I notice that they have some different info on their plants from Simmons Berry Farm, where I ordered last year. http://www.alcasoft.com/simmons/index.html
Simmons orders were for 5 plants each, looks like at Pense you can order 1 of each if you like. I'd order at least 2 of each variety, (after digging around for info on just which varieties you want), just in case you lose one.
When I did a search for blackberries + zone, I got a NAFEX archived offer from Vic to Del offering him some Z3 blackberries. So you needn't worry your little head about blackberries taking the cold. As for the heat and drought, they can probably take that if you can get them established. Chickasaw is said to be the most heat and drought resistant. We were as dry as your fencepost was back in the fall of 2005, and still had wild blackberries cropping in '06. What I have read is that the thornless ones like the soil a little more acid than the thorny ones. As for flavor, berries picked commercially will be picked for black color, not for ripeness. Most people buying them were probably planning on cooking them with lots of sugar anyway, or putting them in a salad with sweeter fruit just for their color. RIPE blackberries are plenty sweet enough to eat in the field, and with a minor bit of lily gilding, are excellent eating in the kitchen. Donna




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