North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Sherlock Terry <sherlocksmith@gmail.com>]

Hi Everyone,

Around me (northern VT) we have lots of wild blackberries (in addition to wild red and black raspberries). The blackberries are ok if you find them at the right time, but don't produce all that well, are pretty small and seedy, and are not overly delicious in my opinion. Based on my experience with the wild ones and the difficulty in finding hardy cultivars, I thought I wouldn't plant any blackberries. Last year I started hearing about some folks with old patches of now forgotten named varieties and this year there were absolutely perfect flowering conditions. You could spot abandoned farmyard blackberry patches a mile away and there were a lot of them. At a local county fair in late July I saw overflowing bowls of giant blackberries entered in the fruit competitions from a number of folks. I also ran into a couple of people with their own stands. The berries were a whole different world from the wild ones! This fall I dug some up from a neighbor and will see how they do on my site. She said they produce consistently with no dieback. They are ultra thorny and about 6' if left unpruned, but I don't thinking the picking is very difficult if they are well managed.

I think there was some discussion about the hardiest blackberries on the list before and I saw that the last couple of years Fedco is selling a similar sounding blackberry to the one I tried and transplanted. Here's the Fedco link:

http://www.fedcoseeds.com/trees/search.php?item=2751&listname=Blackberry

From Lewis Hill (old VT nurseryman b. 1924)
"Few Nurseries carry the older, hardy kinds anymore, so growers in cold areas may have trouble locating a blackberry that will produce fruit. Snyder, an old-time hardy one, is still being sold, but unfortunately, its size and quality are inferior to modern blackberries. Northern growers sometimes find some of the old cultivars on abandoned farms and transplant these to their gardens." Fruits and Berries...p 168

It would be interesting to learn some more of the history around the old varieties. I guess I've never tried non-grocery store blackberries to compare mine with, but I wouldn't describe the ones I tried as small or of poor quality.

-Sherlock
z4 VT