Thank you Scott for posting this. I had been thinking about trying a Marionberry or possibly a Loganberry here in my zone 6b. I think you just saved me some time, money, and disappointment. Thanks! -Glenn

You're welcome Glenn! I would consider giving Metolius a try instead, it is supposed to be nearly as good as Marionberry.

This year I am also adding Obsidian and Kotata, two more thorny trailing varieties of unknown hardiness that are rated excellent for flavor in the report I cite above. Its time to finally pull the Marions, Logans and Cascades after 4-5 years of experimenting, and that will give me some room.

Scott

Thanks Scott. For this particular area, on my existing trellis, next year I was thinking of replacing one of my two Chester's with another thornless tip-root-spreading (non root/rhizome/stolon/runner/etc spreading) variety. But, it appears that Metolius is a thorny rhizome spreading variety, so it probably wouldn't work for me there. I'm already also growing Triple Crown and Doyle. Let me know if you've got a know of something which might work for me there.

That said, I may take out a few of my lesser-performing raspberries next year though. Perhaps Metolius could be a good candidate for one of those areas.

Thanks! -Glenn

Glenn, I had thought all the western blackberries were tip-root spreaders only; that has been my experience with all of them. On the thorns side there are some seriously mean thorns on them so you need the extra-thick gloves to handle them, or expect to pay a blood tax. The Orus 1843-3 may in fact prove to be a worthy thornless one if its hardy enough, and it is also supposed to be one of the best tasting, the only one of these to rival Marion. I was really hoping Black Pearl would work out and I could forget about thorns, but that didn't happen.

I don't have any other strong recommendations, Triple Crown was my favorite and you already have that. My 7-year TC planting got some disease and its all gone now. It was also in a too-shaded area and that helped the diseases along.

Scott

scott,
how cold would you say it was there this last winter, temperature wise?

Hi Scott-
Ok, if Orus 1843-3 is thornless, great tasting, tip-spreading-only variety (like TC), then I'm interested again! For me, with little kids who love berries, with a limited amount of space, the thorny blackberries just don't offer enough to me to make them worth the blood tax. I didn't see anyone carrying it though... How did you get yours?

Looks like my 2 new Triple Crowns have about 1 foot or so of dieback this year. Would you consider that normal in zone 6b? Any cause for concern during a colder winter? I don't get any of that on my very-hardy Chester's.

Thanks, -Glenn

Matt, my low temp each year averages in the 0-5F range, occasionally dipping a bit into the -'s but not very often. For blackberries my experience is the amount of windy cold weather is a big factor, not just the coldest temp.

Glenn, I got the Orus 1843-3 from Raintree, but they stopped selling it a few years ago. I had mine planted in a bad shady spot and they were almost dead so I moved them last year to a sunny spot. I am still not sure at all how hardy they are, maybe they are not so good. I understand they are difficult to propagate and that may be why noplace has them now; I expect they will eventually be available. They also go by the name "Wild Treasure".

Scott

Oh Glenn I missed your question on the TC dieback. I usually get some dieback on them which varies from cane to cane but is less than 10% overall.

Scott

That's pretty much what I'm getting too. Thanks again for everything Scott. -Glenn

1843-3 has just been officially released as 'Wild Treasure'. The reason it hasn't been available in a while is because there was a problem with some material that had been distributed to some nurseries (it wasn't fertile), so they went back to the original stock and started over. It's a cross between a wild Rubus ursinus selection and Waldo.

Thanks Fruitgirl-
Have you grown it? If so, how do you like it and how does it compare with Triple Crown/Doyle/Chester?
-Glenn

Thanks Scott, great report!!

Is there a better place to buy these than Raintree?

I haven't grown it, but I've seen it growing in a few different places (I work for a large grower/processor/nursery, which will remain nameless b/c I don't want to advertise, but don't grow much myself, since I can get it at work for free!).

Anyway, it's just totally different from all of those three, since they're all semi-erect and Wild Treasure is trailing...they have quite different genetic backgrounds (and the erect cultivars also have a distinc genetic background). You'll need to trellis and train it differently, too. You can tell that it's half wild (small berry size), but the flavor is great...yet very different from the three you mention.

Fruitgirl, thats interesting to hear about problems with the material - maybe my plants have the same problem since I expect it was from this early batch. Was it a potential virus kind of thing, or wrong cultivar?

Fruitnut, for some reason there are not many places selling these new cultivars. Burnt Ridge, Raintree, and One Green World all sell some but not the same ones. I tried all the Raintree ones and this year am trying some from Burnt Ridge and One Green World. There are various wholesale places selling them but thats not much help. Bay Laurel has Siskiyou now (but no longer Raintree it seems).

Scott

fruitgirl:

Sounds like you should know which of these selections have the best fresh eating quality. Is Marion really the best? Are others nearly as good with better size or yield? Are any of the thornless as good as Marion? OSU say many are excellent, but I think they only say that about the thorny ones.

Thank you!!

You know, I think a lot of them actually tast better than Marion...I think a lot of people just think it's the best because of some very clever marketing. :) Really, it all comes down to personal preference. And, I've tasted some cultiars one day and thought they rocked, then came back a week later and thought another one was better.

Nobody really knows what caused the problem with the sterility. It's likely a somoclonal variant that arose during the virus clean-up process...not a virus itself.

Hmm not good, I'll have to check with Raintree to see if they thought they may have sold the sterile one.

I have never tasted any of the Western ones other than Marion and some wild ones (which I like a lot so I would really like to try the real Orus 1843-3). If you search online, with every Oregon blackberry release they do a taste test which I assume is blind, and there Marion always comes out on top by a bit. But the tasters could of course be biased toward that flavor already. My guess is any of the ones the report I cited above that is called "excellent" is probably an excellent-tasting berry overall.

I found this interesting article recently on flavonoids in blackberries which showed how much they differ in the taste compounds -- it is shocking how diverse they are. The study is below. In the full article they give a table of how much of each compound there is and they are not close at all, off by either one or two orders of magnitude many times!

Scott

Here is a link that might be useful: Blackberry taste study

PS for serious infowonks, the lead authors PhD thesis looks to have all the tables I was referring to -- follow link below to around page 170.

Scott

Here is a link that might be useful: Du PhD

I ordered four: Metolius and Silvan from Raintree. Obsidian and Marion from One Green World. That's all I could find in stock now. Should give me a pretty good idea if I like them enough to try more. I'll try them outdoors but don't expect all will be hardy. So I'll try them protected as well.

Thanks again for the info.

Following up on the Orus 1843-3, I called up Raintree and according to them the problem is that the one they sold is not self-fertile, but I should still be fine since I have many other varieties that can pollinate it. They didn't know anything about the tissue culture introducing a problem. They also have no plans to offer it again since they seemed to think it was fundamentally a self-sterile variety.

So, its not completely clear whats going on but no reason to dig it up for me .. yet.

Scott

Hey Scott, I'm not trying to sound snotty, but I work directly with the breeder of 1843-3...so I know that 'Wild Treasure' (which is what 1843-3 is being named) is now ok. There was a problem somewhere along the line where it went from being self-fertile to not. It was supposed to be officially named and released a few years ago, but that got put on hold due to the self-infertile issue.

Raintree, to the best of my knowledge, doesn't propagate blackberries, but buys them from companies like mine, that actually DO the propagation.

As for the Marion flavor thing, people can usually tell which puree is Marion in those blind taste test things, because Marion has a bit different color than the rest. So yeah, there's definitely some bias there!

Thanks fruitgirl, you're not sounding snotty at all to me, keep it coming! I have known from past years that I never get the best information out of Raintree, its OK but often not perfect. If self-infertile is the only problem I should still be able to run my hardiness test with my current plants but if I like it will search out some new ones once it starts to show up in nurseries. If your company wants a free east coast hardiness test of a couple plants, drop me an email as well :-)

Scott

One addendum: the Orus 1843-3-sterile is hardier than I thought: one small cane died back by half but the biggest cane I missed and it has no dieback on it. So its in the 80% survival bracket, pretty good! The Wild Treasure may be a great east coast berry. I'm not sure they will be the most popular with kids, they don't have nearly the sugars that the domesticated varieties do, but the flavor is unique.

Scott

That's good to hear about 'Wild Harvest's' the 80% survival. I wonder if a more mature plant would have less dieback than a immature one? Or maybe it's just about the winter? I do like sweet, but I think I value uniqueness higher. Wild blackberries (and tart Chester's, raw cranberries, wild grapes, etc) are no problems for my kids, so I suspect a good tasting, not-so-much-sugar variety would be fine. I'm also thinking, by chance, it would probably have a different harvest time than my other 3, which I would like. Now, if I just knew were to find it. I didn't see it at Raintree, Burnt Ridge, One Green World, or anywhere else. Thanks for all the info Scott & Fruitgirl!
-Glenn

Glenn, I expect it will be available in a few years; if not, the ARS has cuttings of it. I have never rooted blackberries but based on how easy they tip root it should not be very hard. If you want to try out one of the self-sterile ones I have some tip roots of mine, just drop me a line. It sounds like it needs another blackberry for pollination, not sure on whether any other one will work or not.

Based on my observations of different canes, the thicker ones do tend to be a bit more hardy than the thinner ones so I expect a bigger plant will be somewhat more hardy. Overall I now have high expectations for it on the hardiness front.

Scott

I wouldn't actually plant it until next year, so perhaps it will be available then. Though, for your sterile offer (thank you btw!), with 4 other varieties around (wild, Chester, Doyle, TC), you'd hope that it would be happy with some of those pollens. But it's probably best that I just wait, as I do have a producing blackberry there now. Let us know if you feel the taste is worth it! -Glenn

As long as we're tossing ORUS terms around, I am on the lookout for ORUS 1112-2 and especially ORUS 1316-1 that was my favorite at the Caneberry Open House last July at NWREC. According to printed handouts, the 1316-1 was "available at nursery" but when I called around, including a grower somewhere in Washington state, it had not been released yet. Fruitgirl? Anyone?

Larry Gene, I haven't seen those. ARS may have cuttings if they don't start showing up in nurseries. One problem with "nurseries" here is there are wholesale-only places which probably are selling them now for commercial growers, but us little guys are stuck.

One more addendum to the report above, the Cascade variety did better than I reported above, lets call it 50% survival. My planting is a bit of a mess, lots of varieties crammed in a small spot just to see how they work. Fortunately there is more room now, the Black Pearl/Marion/Logan are now gone.

Scott

Hi Larry,
1112-2 has been dropped...it just wasn't special enough/different enough from what's already out there to warrant being released.

1316-1 is still in the program. The company I work for used to propagate a wide range of the ORUS seletions for grower trial. However, most of the time, these plants ended up getting tossed after sitting in the greenhouse for ages. Growers just wouldn't take stuff for testing. We decided that we couldn't keep throwing money away like that, and at the same time, our tissue culture side of the business really picked up, so the time and space to do that kind of stuff really decreased.

We still want to assist the breeding programs, though, so our policy now is that we'll propagate selections *if* we have a committment that grower 1, 2 and 3 will each take 50 plants of X selection. We're working with some grower groups to try to get some sort of organized structure to make this happen. When it does, we'll have stuff available again, and it's possible you could get your hands on a couple of plants.

Scott, why the "nurseries" in quotation marks? I'm reading it as being a bit derogatory, quite honestly. Just because a company is big and only sells wholesale doesn't make them any less of a nursery!

Fruitgirl, I didn't mean "nurseries" in a derogatory sense, I meant it as "in the sense the word 'nurseries' was used in the information Gene heard". Here in this forum the word "nursery" means the retail kind and people often forget there is a whole world of nurseries out there which are wholesaling to growers only. Based on your remarks it appears this is in fact the case since it sounds like your nursery is one of the places they had in mind, and you are a wholesale nursery.

Gene, I think the route that may work for you is to try to convince Raintree or some other place to carry some of them. Raintree and One Green World are both pretty good about getting new releases in their catalogs. Looking at ARS they now have cuttings of 1112-2 available but not 1316-1.

Scott

Fruitgirl and Scott, thanks for those tips. There were both berries and puree for 1112-2 and 1316-1 at the 2009 open house, the test fields there likely have a partial row of 1112-2. Glad to hear that 1316 is still alive, and I will put a bug in the ear of both OGW and Raintree about 1316.

I always assumed the nursery mentioned in the NWREC handout was a wholesale operation, but when one wants a plant variety badly enough, they will try many approaches.