Thornless Blackberries? No Thanks! ... A 6 Year Update

The plan has changed...

[cynthiafisher]

I wonder what variety of thornless blackberries you grew? I grow Triple Crown thornless blackberries and they are wonderful and huge, as long as I prune them well.

[ayanbaqur]

I've got a pair of thornless blackberry bushes in my back yard and they produce big, beautiful, and tasty berries every year. I'm not sure of the variety since they came with the house. Also I'm on the west coast.

[zigzagstreaks]

Sorry to hear of your unrewarding experience. I grow Arapaho, Ouachita, and Prime-Ark Traveler in heavy clay soil in Texas, and although they took their time getting established, the fruit is plentiful and sweet. The trick, in my case, is to wait until the berry has been black for a couple of days before picking it.

[ToddBossaller]

We have eight varieties of blackberries at our farm, four thorny, four thornless. Ensure you are pruning them correctly as that can impact flavor, among other things. Our Natchez plants are very productive with large berries, but if they overcrop, the flavor will be off. The leaves are important as well as the ratio of berries. Make sure they are in full sun. My favorites are Natchez, Ponca, and Caddo. If I could only plant one, it would probably be Natchez. Once you fill a shell with those big berries, anything smaller is just more work :-) I order from NourseFarms near you.

[daved]

Growing a mulberry tree will keep you in berries until you get the blackberries sorted out.

[farmerbobsgarden]

i would like to know what variety you planted ?

[k.d.]

Doyle's are good, but you have to pick them dead ripe. A day early and their sour, a day late and their mush.

[novampires]

The first year I grew a thornless raspberry they tasted terrible and I was going to rip them out. The second year they were much better. When I moved across state I bought more, I will see if it's the same. No thorns is really nice..

[seattlebeard]

I planted Bushel and Berry's 'Baby Cakes' and I the same experience. Scant fruit with absolutely no flavor. I don't know why they're being sold in nurseries. Fortunately for me I planted them in large pots. I replaced them with black currants from Raintree Nursery.

[mikhailkalashnikov]

We grow thornless blackberries and they do great. They produce heavy the entire month of June, the berries near the top of the bush that get all day sun seem to be the largest and sweetest although we eat them all. None of them really taste bad. I catch the tips in buckets of soil in the fall, and by spring I've got new bushes growing in the buckets. Cut them free from the mother plant and you're in business! They sell out quickly on marketplace.

[dorothyfu]

So sorry about your thornless blackberries. You probably should have done some research on them before planting them. Because I love blackberries so much, (more than any other berries), I probably would have put up with the thorns. Once I went picking them in the wild, (sort of edge of a University campus), came back to the dorm with cuts and scratches all over, but I didn't care. Those blackberries were wonderful.

[alanknight]

Have you tried looking at the bottom of that little waterfall for gold? That's a perfect catch.

[David-kdmf]

Yeah im done with thornless blackberries too. Flavorless and spit worthy.

[iwatchthistuf]

had 20 planted, i adjusted the soil ph first and made certain the area had no tress that were juglone producing, fertizlzed with horse manure. had great tasteting berries the first year. then the two oldest horses figured out that working together they could unlock the barn gate, then unlocked the garden gate pulled the plants up from the roots and ate everything. had enuff money in that patch to buy 2 tons of stock and stable, or 7ton of pairie hay . wife said, " I told you my horses were smart."

[marynunn]

Id be real cautious about building a workshop so near a creek unless its elevated well above the flood zone.

As for the berries you didnt mention any kind of soil testing. But it sounds to me like they had an over abundance of growth promoting minerals and insufficient minerals supporting reproduction. And based only on the tree shadows in this video, may not have gotten enough direct sunlight. In short, struggling plants generally dont produce great tasting fruit.

[carlschnackel]

I planted a bunch of blackberries last year. I haven't gotten any berries yet, but they're loaded with green berries now. I was told by a local horticulturist that thornless berries will usually have a lower yield than the thorned varieties. I've got some Kiowa blackberries planted next to some Prime Ark Freedom blackberries. At this time, I can say that the thorns on the Kiowa bushes are vicious, while the Prime Ark is thornless. So far I can see that the thorned bushes appear to have a larger crop at this time. I've got some Black Gem thornless blackberries in my back yard that just have a few blossoms on them. They might be a disappointment, regardless of the doctors in the University of Arkansas, who developed them, saying that they were their favorite. One other thing about the Kiowa... The berries are huge = averaging about 2 inches long. I hope they also taste good. I'll find out.

[rodeleon]

i had same experience with 2 or 3 varieties of thornless. the thorned ones produced great but were brutal to pick.

[RoyatAvalonFarms]

I suppose not all thornless varieties are the same. We planted a few Triple Crown thornless blackberries at my dads place after taking diggings from my sisters house and both places are doing fantastic. Loads of sweet berries on every bush. And they keep trying to grow side shoots which we dig out and either give away or sell to others. Mostly giving away.

[bknomad]

I don't think thornless-ness is related to the flavor. The variety, plant nutrient, and timing are major factors.

[christineedwards]

I must have your variety, lol. Mine has hardly gotten a chance to fruit because of deer pressure in the spot I planted it, not to mention poor soil and weed competition because it was meant to be a temporary planting just to get it out of the pot, but when it did manage to make some fruit a few years back, it tasted terrible. What's strange though, is that the same plant made fruit while still in it's pot a year after it should have been planted (this was something around 10 years ago), and made fruit that tasted decent. I think the poor flavor might be related to stress or nutrients, heavily cultivated plant varieties are often heavy feeders, such as the nice looking large delphiniums. I'm not giving up on my variety yet, one of these days I'll give it a better place to grow and see if the flavor improves. Be prepared to smother that area if you want to wipe out your blackberries, because they easily regrow from a piece of root left in the ground.