Once your blackberry plants grow new shoots that develop some leaves and are a foot or two tall, that will prove out the viability of the clump. It would then be fine to prune out some of the old original canes and leave a couple to bloom and fruit. Blackberries in good soil and properly sited are vigorous plants and can tolerate a lot of literature ignoring. If for some reason the old canes do not bloom and the new canes get pretty tall and leafy, then cut out all the old canes.

There are many grafted Tennosui branches growing on several varieties of pear trees, as well as pear rootstocks, at this Houston area place. Other than a tiny experience with fireblight, they have been very healthy. Many of the 2 year old grafts have resulted in 6 to 8 foot long verticle branches, and I can't find any discolored, diseased,or disfigured bark on these. I do have several below-the-graft young branches with tan bark that were discolored from disease when I did those T-buds a year ago. It was a choice that I made to do T-buds in the flexible tan bark where there was some splotchy discoloration rather than bark grafts farther down the tree where the older, thicker gray bark looked very healthy. I was running out of scions to graft with, so I tried a few buds. The white wood below this ugly bark was beautiful, and the buds grew out well. There is no disease on these new branches, but the remaining tan stubs still show their discolored, ugly bark. I suppose that these young, healthy Tennosui branches will continue their skyward blastoff despite having an imperfect launchpad.........Is the diseased part of your tree below the Tennosui graft? Are their branches growing and look healthy? Was this a bare root tree, and if so, did you prune away 30-50% of the branches when you planted it? There are a zillion ways that real pear growers could provide professional guidance on rehabbing/boosting your tree. As a semi-hack at this stuff, I might invest $5 in a bag of Black Kow cow manure at Lowes and spread it thinly around the planting site. That, a layer of mulch on top, and regular watering ......who knows....maybe the Tennosui will grow well anyway. Point of interest: Some local plant sales offered Tennosui grafted onto slow growing, "dwarfing" rootstocks. Impatience can be alleviated somewhat by buying and planting the biggest Bradford pear tree that you can and afterwards graft Tennosui buds or scions from your young tree onto the Bradford branches. Fast forwarding is fun.

HI folks Sorry I've been off posting since last fall - I've missed you all. Partly I've been online so incredibly long hours teaching (university) that I haven't been able to stand being online any more than I have to be. Also, I had a devastating garden-wide bout with Rose Rosette Disease last fall and had to take out about 20 roses and prune ABSOLUTELY everything else to the ground to hope to avoid catastrophic rose disaster. I'll post separately about that, maybe this weekend. Suffice to say for 1000 roses several of which were 12' tall and 10 years old (owning their own dumpsters) this was an exhausting and demoralizing fall. To respond to folks in warmer zones that just got that bizarre freeze all the way to Texas, it doesn't hurt to wait a bit to prune. Dead canes don't cause the rose problems any more than long fingernails cause you problems beyond inconvenience, though if there is downy mildew spotting it's probably good to prune sooner than later. I try to wait till the rose starts leafing out and you can see what is alive at that point. Seil, no I'm not remotely pruning at this point - the post is several years old and was from mid to late March. We're still recovering from the snowiest January ever and one of the coldest Februaries ever. Thank heavens it was in that order! Under the snow it's always 32 degrees however cold the air gets, and we had easily two feet of snow (16" in one snowfall) protecting everything. It's just now starting to melt with temps this week into the 40's all week, but it'll be a long time till I'm out in the garden. Great tips about not pruning once-bloomers Seil. Fortunately those are among the roses that don't take any pruning at all and I almost never see winter damage. Occasionally I'll see a once bloomer shed a cane for some reason, but that can be pruned out after the spring bloom to avoid disrupting the other canes. For the first year ever since growing roses, i have absolutely no rose pruning to do this spring. Everything was pruned to the ground so it's a matter of seeing what resprouts from the ground, and anxiously checking for any signs of RRD and ruthlessly digging out. No second chances or wimping out. Glad this post is helpful! Cynthia

If these are being grown outdoors, you want to wait until spring when you see the plants starting to push new growth. Too late in the season to do so now. If these are actual topiaries, you will need to prune more than once a year to keep them trim and in shape.