North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Mark Angermayer" <hangermayer@isp.com>]

Michael,

This discussion reminds me of something I've been wondering for a long time.
How does one keep unwanted seedlings out of the blackberry rows?
Invariably, many berries drop from the plants, in spite of the best
intentions of orchard sanitation :-)  What is to keep these berries from
germinating new crosses in the rows, thereby mingling and contaminating the
improved cultivars originally planted?  Will the rows eventually become a
bunch of crosses?

Mark
KS


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Dossett" <>
To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2008 3:18 PM
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Triple Crown blackberry


> Triple Crown is indeed a USDA release and is not patented.  For a variety
of reasons, USDA has not patented any of its blackberries (can't speak to
any of it's other releases), but is coming under increased pressure from the
industry to do so.  Within the next few years, new blackberry releases from
the USDA's program here in Corvallis will probably all be patented.
>
> As for the putative primocane fruiting, my guess is that this is a strong
"lateral" that broke bud from the crown of the plant and is not truly a
primocane.  I have seen Triple Crown do this on a couple of occaisions.
While it is not common, it's not unheard of either.  If this were my plant
and I wanted to cover my bases, I would do two things.  First, I would save
seed from a couple of the fruits that are currently ripe from this part of
the plant.  These are most likely to be selfs unless there are other fall
fruiting blackberries nearby which could have acted as a pollen source.  If
it is a sport or some other genetic mutation you should see primocane
fruiting in the resulting seedlings.  Second, I would mark the cane with
flagging or in some other way.  Save it and don't prune it out at the end of
the season.  Wait until next spring and see if any of the buds below the
fruiting portion of this cane break and leaf out.  If they do then it is a
>  primocane.  If they don't, then it was just a strong lateral coming from
the crown of the plant.
>
> Michael
>
> Michael Dossett
> Corvallis, Oregon
>