First of all, I have to tell you that my attempt with the new blackberries I told you about last year has been a success…. well, sort of a success. Prime Jan and Prime Jim were introduced by the University of Arkansas as a blackberry that produces on a primeocane, meaning that the cane emerging from the ground in the spring will bloom and produce fruit in the fall of the same year. Well, last year was not a fair trial for anything new, and those blackberries had a couple of blossoms, but they didn’t amount to anything. So, I decided to try to keep the canes alive over winter by covering them with a thick layer of corn stalks. Our cycles of freezing and thawing through the winter is what kills the stems on a lot of zone 5 plants that we attempt to grow in zone 4. I uncovered the canes in May and there was still ice under the stalks, so I knew my mulch was successful, and now those canes are bearing large, luscious berries….yea! New primeocanes are growing well and we’ll se what happens a little later (I realize that Arkansas has a much longer growing season than Minnesota, but they are labeled as a zone 4).
Posted on: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 18:03:07 +0000
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