Right by the garage door it will be colder, put them there. My garage is 55 by the house and 35F by the garage door on a cold day. They should keep indefinitely at 35F. Even 50F should be OK for a few weeks.

If you check and its not 35F by your door, put a bunch of insulation over them to create a tent between the plants and the outside wall of the garage. Make sure there is lots of wall surface directly exposed to the plants to transfer cool to them. I have done this with a pile of old blankets and achieved a temperature at a midpoint between the inside and outside. Note that the blankets are doing the opposite of how they usually work, they are keeping the thing under cool and the thing out from them warm. It seems counter-intuitive perhaps, but it works!

Scott

I can only guess, but my bet is that the plants would be fine at 50 F for a couple weeks. But I wouldn't go much longer than that.

Thank you for the quick responses. Good, the weather should be back to average (38F/23F) by the weekend and I'll put them back outside. I kind of over did it this year and now I have 14 potted plants to move in and out of the garage. I'm going to plant the bulk of them this year and just cover them up for the next winter.

Yes, plant them out in spring and cover them up next winter. I've had Chester producing in zone 3 for the past 3 years, heavily covered up in winter, and while it's a struggle to keep them here, I think you should have no problem in zone 6.

I have good growth on several western trailing varieties (marion, boysen, logan, black diamond, wild treasure and silvan) during last year and I'm eager to taste some of the fruits of my labor this year. I'm curious as to whether there is enough difference in flavor to inspire me to keep these going in addition to other blackberries appropriate to my hardiness zone. Since my temp dropped to 8F this week, I'll get to find out if the rated hardiness on a few of my blackberries is actually true (e.g. Prime Ark 45, Kiowa, Triple Crown).

When you cover them next winter I would recommend using foil bubble insulation. I used leaves one year and thick rowcover another, and found the foil bubble insulation was far superior - it keeps a lot more of the ground heat. The problem with only leaves was one little spot on a long cane would poke out, and that part of the cane would die which killed the whole remainder of the cane.

Let us know what you think of the taste when you get fruit. For cooking I don't think there is much difference but for fresh eating nothing tops a Logan or Marion.

Scott

Would the foil bubble insulation allow enough moisture through to keep the plants from drying out? Given my typical winter weather pattern, I don't think I would need to keep the plants covered more than 60 days (Jan 1st through March 1st).

I was worried about that but found it to be no problem at all. The water naturally goes from wetter to drier soil by capillary action and so on the long timescales it seems to equalize. That plus the fact that soil tends to be wet through winter months.

Another advantage of the aluminum bubble wrap is it reflects heat, and so the plants will not bake on a sunny day and emerge from dormancy too early. I used ground staples to attach the covers to the ground. Right now I am not doing this anymore, I am trying a whole bunch of trailing varieties uncovered to see if any of them prove to be hardy. There are many new varieties that have never really been hardiness-tested. So far I have found Siskiyou to be doing the best, it is very hardy and has very good flavor. Kotata is also fully hardy for me. I'm getting a good test right now, it was 11F this morning and more cold is coming.

Scott

Scott, based on your earlier posts, I bought 2 Kotata from from Burnt Ridge last fall. I was going to order some Siskiyou but decided to wait because I'm running out of prime planting space. I'm pretty excited about sampling the new blackberries as my experience has been limited to wild blackberries and a few berries bought locally which were really poor quality. I did have a couple of Prime Ark 45 and Kiowa berries last year and they were better than what I would typically buy at the grocery store (e.g. Driscolls).

I did not know that Blackberry needs winter protection. My blackberry plants are outside. I am in zone 7 the temp last night was 5. I never protected them and they did fine and produce excellent. Only one of my Blueberries is a southern bush called Rabbit eye I brought it in a week ago but it started to bloom.

This is my first winter with commercial varieties of blackberries, so I don't have first hand experience on their winter hardiness. The trailing varieties that I mentioned above (marion, logan, boysen, silvan, and wild treasure) are more sensitive cold injury than other varieties and would likely be injured at 5F if not covered. Most of the other blackberry varieties tend to be cold injury resistant to zone 6, which starts at 0F. I would look to the advice of some of the other forum members who have been through several winters with their blackberries for their thoughts.

I have overwintered Chester, Prime Ark, Prime Jan, Chickasaw, and Thorned Boysenberry here in my Zone 6a. Almost no die off. 10 to 12 years ago we had a 10 day stretch of -10 temperature which is super unusual for this area and all plants survived although produced nothing that year. They are pretty hardy plants in most respects. Just watch out for those extreme lows.