Sometimes the winter damage doesn't show up until the blackberries are about to flower, which can be well into May. My TC's last year looked pretty good until after they started to flower and then many of the canes just wilted and died. I still ended up with a lot of blackberries from my TC's but I had expected to just see dead brown canes instead.

Same thing that JT experienced happened to me. Except I got no berries at all. I'm probably going to remove my TC this year if it happens again. I sprayed canes with an anti-desiccant, if it works, I'll use it every year.
It was actually colder this winter, so we will see!

Out here we just finished the warmest recorded "meteorological winter".

I don't think it snowed this year--low temperature was +25.0F. I was concerned about chill hours, but since 1 November, they calculate out locally to over 1,000 hours. We normally get almost 3,000. Early-type blackberries are already bud-broken.

Larry my only concern for you guys is that the jet stream will lower. You have been south of it most of the winter, thus the mild winter. We have been north of it. If it shifts you could get some late freezes. It is extremely cold north of the jet stream.

My TC and Chester died last year with temps that got down to around -13. This year the low temp was around -5 in mid December and both of them lost 30% of the leaves.

Drew I am terrified of the jet stream this year. The winter has been crazy warm and all of my fruit trees are at least a month ahead of schedule. The good news it that it has finally cooled off the past weak before any of my plants completely broke dormancy.

We finally have had two days above freezing and some sunshine, so I got my first look at my blackberries. I did see a lot of brown TC canes, so this year's low of -12F may prove to be the point of 'too cold'.

On the upside though, my berries in the garage are starting to pop new canes and a few leaves are showing, especially on my loganberry plant :-)

I finally uncovered all of my trailing blackberries today and checked their status after another cold winter. I had a few plants that had some vole damage, especially my Black Diamond blackberry which may not produce again this year. The canes always look bad at this time of year but time will tell if I covered them well enough. I did notice that both of my thorny boysenberry plants already have green buds and look to be ready to pop some leaves. I also have a few plants in my garage that have been popping leaves for about 2 weeks now, especially the loganberry. I pruned all of my blackberries, black raspberries, and grapevines today while it was nice outside. With reasonably warm weather for the next 7-10 days, I expect to see a lot more plants starting to take off.

Everything is still dormant here, but the blackberries look good from what i could see, I uncovered my Colmbia Star and it still has leaves on it from last year. Covering them with leaves worked really well! My dog damaged some canes during the winter, but plenty look good for a decent crop. Everything covered looks good. Although many are still frozen to the ground, I dare not pulll on them. My Black Diamond is covered with burlap I cannot remove yet. the garden stamples holding the burlap are frozen into the ground. I did mange to pull out a 7 foot cane of wyeberry and put it on the trellis, it looks great! I hope they can remain OK, because we still have over a week of freezing weather at night. Lows are below freezing for at least 10 more days, probably longer.

I put a few more trellis wires in today so my dog in the future should stay out of the bed.

I'm actually starting to get an indicator on which blackberries did the best this last winter.

Triple Crown. My TC's show quite a bit of cold damage on the canes, more so than even last year. It's too early to tell how they will perform this year but I might be having to quite a bit of additional pruning.

Osage. The two Osage plants both look fine and have already started to leaf out quite rapidly. They are a bit less exposed to wind which may have helped them.

Ouachita. These look rough too.

Prime Ark45. Had to cut off all of the floricanes from last year and look forward to the Fall crop. These just don't handle cold weather below 0F.

Trailing Blackberries.

- All of these varieties are starting to show leaves now but cold damage is also very noticeable with brown, dried canes which are easy to spot. Each variety had both straw covering them and a layer of Agribon-50 row cover. A few of the larger plants also had some cardboard covering them as well.

In order of most cold hardy to least cold hardy based on the amount of readily identifiable dead canes and most leave sprouts.

Most cold hardy (observation):

- Kotata. 2 plants. Virtually no damage on either plant. I really wanted to remove them because they are so thorny but they seem to be the most resistant to both cold and voles.

- Newberry. 2 plants, larger plant with no damage. Smaller plant has very little damage.

- Siskiyou. 5 or 6 plants. 25-50% cane damage.

- Wild Treasure. 1 plant which had less damage than most of the Siskiyou plants but could be an anomaly.

- Boysenberry Thorny - 2 plants. one plant 25% damage and the other 75% damage. Not sure why the disparity.

- Marion. 4 plants. 50-75% cane damage. A perennial cold-damaged variety

- Columbia Star. 4 plants. 75%+ damage. Had been hoping for better results but all of the plants got zapped pretty good.

- Black Diamond. N/A. 1 plant. Voles chewed the plant up and I thought it was dead but I did see 2 small leaves. Unlikely to get any berries from this one. Disappointed.

I did notice another disappointment on the Siskiyou blackberries. Nearly all of the larger canes broke off during the winter near the base of the plants. This only happened to the two mature Siskiyou plants. I'm not sure if this was a result of wet straw plus snow weight or something unique to the Siskiyou variety, but it will significantly cut back on their production this year. I'll work on a different cold protection strategy next year that doesn't require as much weight on the plants during the winter.

Sorry to hear about the damage. I have some, but hard to tell how bad just yet. Most look OK with some damage. But sometimes damage isn't obvious.

Plant damage is part of the learning experience, so no worries. I have a lot of other plants that are more cold hardy. My raspberries seem to laugh at the cold weather and I should have gooseberries this year for the first time, so the experience continues. I do have several blackberry plants that I overwintered in the garage for breeding purposes. My loganberry plant is ready to start blooming (e.g actual flowers) which is pretty surprising. I'm going to have to harvest the pollen and use it for hybridizing over varieties blooming later.

I went out today and I'm getting bud swell on my canes. i would say damage is 10-30%. Not really that bad! Leaves, burlap, anti desiccant was used. Seemed to somewhat work. I sprayed anti-desiccant mostly on the uprights, and they look good! No bud swell yet, but most canes are green. The younger one Loch Ness has the most damage. Navaho also looks bad. TC, Chester, Natchez look better, mostly green canes. Green canes on Columbia Star and Black Diamond. Two canes my dog exposed look bad. I had Siskiyou and Marion cuttings in the garage, they look poor, not sure if alive or not? Boysenberry and Wyeberry have swelling buds with most canes OK. I should get 500 or more berries. I can live with that!

Without cover . Triple crown no damage . Kiowa dead to ground . Not sure of Kiowa's true hardiness but it is not hardy in zone 5 as advertised .

Zones are always not that accurate. In the winter of 2013-14 my TC died to the ground in Zone 6 and it was colder this year, but I protected it.

I had Kiowa but it is only hardy to about 0F. It's probably closer to a Zone 7 than Zone 6, so I removed mine.

I may grow the Kiowa in a large pot . I got fruit once . I would like to try breeding it to a local wild .

One of the main problems with cross breeding with wild varieties is the transfer of plant viruses. If you are going to the trouble of creating hybrids, I would suggest starting with virus-free plants. It might be a couple of years before you figure out that there a viral infection with a hybrid and then you have all of that wasted time and effort.

I plan to harvest pollen from the wilds. The plants won't be anywhere near mine. Only 3 viruses could be present in Rubus pollen and they are rare here, and I'm pretty sure none infect blackberries. Well one infects the giant blackberry R. procerus. So it's safe. Well always a chance of infection, but unless each plant you buy is from tissue culture, their is a chance it is infected. Apparently it's when not if your patch will become infected.

All the same I may wait to use plants that are coming in this year. Instead of the wild ones. They also are cold tolerant, but have huge berries, and good taste. I can keep practicing my germination techniques this year. I do have a white blackberry that is very cold tolerant, and may play with that.

I gave them no protection and they are the greenest plants I have. The floricanes look like primocanes.

I have selection from the wild . Grew from seed under a old apple tree at my grandmothers . It has been in the family for about 30 years . So it is under cultivation and never shown virus . I guess taking pollen to it would be best . For a wild it is better than most . My brother and I both have patches of it . I would like bigger berries and Kiowa is very large . Tried Illini hardy but boy it has vicious thorns . Plus new growth covers the berries before they are ripe . A real bloody picking . Just tinkering to see what I can get .

I know what a pain! While looking into genes it seems the thornless gene is linked to the not hardy gene, not sure you can separate them? Although their are 3 or 4 thornless genes, Columbia Star uses the Lincoln Logan gene for thornlessness. I'm going to try working with that gene. I may have to do multiple crosses. Even though Columbia Star is patented OSU is allowing breeders to use it for free. Unlike U of Ark which you must ask and considering certain actions taken against farmers propagating the plant, doubt they would give permission. Many though are off patent that are thornless.

Does anyone know of a good site for identifying what type of blackberry plant I have? They were my great, great grandfather's plants from southern illinois. My mom moved these up to chicago about 40 years ago, so I have no information on them. But they are thornless, large and delicious. A neighbor said she thinks they are loganberries. In any case, I want to transplant some to my new house and I want to make sure I do it right.

It could be a Lincoln Logan too.

They are probably not loganberries if they survive the winter there unprotected. Can you post a picture of there leaves and how they grow (e.g trailing, erect or semi-erect?

Only slightly related to the current thread... Could someone point me to a GardenWeb thread (or two) which gives good info on year round care of my blackberries? Along with the why! It would be most appreciated.

Some quick info:
- We are in SE Michigan, outside Ann Arbor, recently reclassified from 5B to 6A, but I'm not so sure.
- My wife is the Master Gardener, and gardens for a living, so I don't get to say too much. <grin>
- She is responsible for the two rows of raspberries.
- I'm from Georgia, so want my blackberries. We planted a 22[ft] row of Chester Thornless, and I am taking over responsibility for these.
- We've had trouble with the red neck cane borer, and cut all canes back to the ground at the end of 2013.
- I removed all but the most vigorous 5 or 6 canes from each plant at the end of 2014, because I think that's what I was supposed to do. (yes?)
- I really need to know what to do right now. Spring is here and it's all about to start. So what do I look for on the canes (last year's primocanes, right?)? What do I prune off? How far back do I cut what is still there?

I'm an engineer, detail oriented, data driven... but not a horticultural idiot. I've got a rather green thumb I think, but am not so good at mapping the day to day (or seasonal) efforts to the long view, big picture in the fruiting plant world.

Again, any help would be much appreciated. And thanks in advance.

~Allen

Thanks jtburton! I would say these are most likely trailing, or possibly semi-trailing. They are just starting to put out leaves for this year. Here are photos of their new leaves and also the leaves on the dead vines from last year.

- Denise

Collected my Loganberry blooms (unopened) and removed the pollen grains. Letting them dry for a couple of days before putting them in storage until the rest of the blackberries start to bloom. I hope to get a few crosses to take this season. I still have two other open crosses growing that over wintered successfully..so far. One is thorny and the other appears thornless.