North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Jim Fruth" <jfruth@uslink.net>]

Bill,
   Are you saying that you got fruit from the same boysenberry canes year 
after year?

   While my canes are bearing fruit, new canes are growing, creeping along 
the ground.  I have to be careful when walking through so I don't crush the 
growing canes.  The following Spring I chop out the old canes at ground 
level and trellis the new canes, just like I do with my black raspberries.

   Or are you really saying that your Dad's patch became a tangled mess of 
old dead canes that were never cut out?

   There is a wild blackberry patch near here that I can't harvest from 
unless I cut out all of the old canes to get at the new, bearing 
canes..................Isn't this what your boysenberry patch was like?

Jim Fruth
Brambleberry Farm
Pequot Lakes, MN  56472
www.bberryfarm.com
(218)568-8483 [Store]
(218)831-7018 [My Cell]

My father, in 1942, planted a 60 ft. row and used post and wire to support 
the boysenberries the same as you usually do grapes.  I remember that he had 
me to clean out 3 mule stalls and spread the manure alongside of the plants.

The row produced so much that many families in our neighborhood had plenty.

Every few years, he would have me cut the canes back to the ground and 
spread manure again.

I do not remember any problem with the canes dying  but  maybe that was why 
he had me to cut the old canes back to the ground to get rid of some 
disease.

The berries were doing fine when he sold the homeplace in 1950.   He did not 
plant bosenberries at the new homeplace in 1950.

The new owner did not take care of the berries as well as my father had and 
so in a few years the berries were not doing very good.  I guess he just 
plowed them up and that was the end.

Bill Freels
Paducah, Ky