It could be the site i guess. South facing and gets a lot of winter sun. Right near the house. I don't know, but it really gets zapped. I just pruned out all the dead branches and there were a lot. They are actively growing, putting out a ton of new shoots.

well Frank, that is very disappointing to say the least as I just bought one this year hoping to have some thornless blacks that won't eat my kid:)I get -18F -20F usually and every ten years or so it bottoms out to -25F brrrrr! Have you ever thought of training them along the ground?

Thanks for the heads up, I was going to try some. Guess I will stick with my ÂChestersÂ

My blackberries have some die back in Michigan, so I was going to try TC......but not now. More of the same.

I studid blackberries in your zones over ten years ago advice then was cover with straw 6 foot deap ever year you have great production. If there high wind add cover over straw.

I only have one year of data. I planted 3 TC's in a pretty open area last spring. No protection from wind or sun or cold temps.

Two weeks ago they looked dead. One week ago I started getting leaves near the bottom. Now, I have leaves sprouting about 5 feet from the ground, and I get more each day. Upon close inspection, only the last 18" of each vine is dead.

camp10

Where abouts are you? I'm over by the Mississippi River...If your anywhere near the L Michigan, the winter over there was MILD. A friend lives N of MKE and he dropped to around 0F for the low during winter.

I would suggest covering them if you plan on trying them. I still think i'll rip mine out entirely and stick with something else. I did have fruit last year (not much) even with die back. I have some in large containers that i plan on protecting in the garage.

I'll add that i have 4 different types of sweet cherries flowering and all of my peaches trees have flowers...so it was "mild" enough for all of them.

I'm smack dab in the middle, FrankTank. Southern Dane county. We didn't have a very cold winter (few days below zero, none below -10F.), but we didn't have a January thaw either.

The vines grew some 10-12 feet long and are wrapped around fence wires. I'm not sure how I would protect them??

I planted my first peaches this spring. Will probably plant a few cherries next year. Now if I could quit buying apple trees....

Yeah..mine made it above the roof line of the house, so probably 12ft+...they grow insane...the branches i cut off were too big for a hand pruner...

I've read that in Michigan they grow them under plastic and get very good results. They mentioned it could be the drying winter winds that actually do the killing.

What kind of peach? I'm growing a "Red Gold" nectarine in a container and its just loaded with flowers. The peaches are all seed grown and are flowering their first time this year. Took 3 years seed to flower...pretty impressive. Whats odd is some of them have big show pink flowers and some have white flowers, and other have ugly flowers!

I didn't even mulch mine. They stayed in the same spot, got covered with a few inches of snow a few times & withstood temps down to the single digits just fine. They are growing great so far this Spring.

- Steve

I thought about thornless blackberries, but decided against them...for now. I'm supposed to be in zone 6, but I'm only 5 miles from Idaho, and after too many winters of -27 F, I decided to buy plants for zone 4.

This year, I'm going to try some purple royalty raspberries. They're not thornless, but not as vicious as blackberries. They're not blackberries, but look similar for the kids' "peter rabbit" area of the kitchen garden I'm working on.

Has anyone tried Loch Ness? I love the name, but don't know how hardy they would be. Many that say zone 5, don't seem to really do well in zone 5 winters, without a lot of protection.

My plants have been productive if temps don't go lower than -15. But the past couple years the lows have been
-20 and that has killed the top growth. Instead of weeding out all the tip starts its creating, put in 100ft row last year and this spring put in 160ft row, so I should have alot of fruit when this area has a more normal winter.

You should think about prime jan or prime jim blackberries so you can still get blackberries every year, though they are thorny... I just got prime jan last year, so hopefully it has fruit when my triplecrown has off year.

Mine seem to be covered in flowers right now, go figure. Maybe i will keep them :) and somehow cover them.

I've seen them killed at much lower temps than what you guys are saying here. Seems to me the cutoff is around -10 on sites I manage them. Of course it depends a lot on when the cold comes and the state of the plants going into winter as well as their level of dormancy. Plants are hardier in Jan. than early Mar.

Here in Vancouver, BC our Triple Crown blackberries did FANTASTIC. We harvested 64 POUNDS of blackberries from two plants! (4 canes on one plant, and 5 canes on the other plant). I have no complaints about Triple Crown. But of course, the winters here have never been below 0°F (-18°C) in recorded history.