Disclaimer: My experience may differ from other people's experience. Generally, a 2-yr plant from a retailer will have its canes pruned back to make it easier to ship and to help it to better establish when it is planted. If the plant was grown in a pot, its root system may throttle back growth to adjust to the available resources. You may also have root circling in the pot which will need some pruning. While you may have fruit next year with a more mature plant, generally the amount of fruit you will get will be minimal. You are essentially buying the root system. Blackberry Fruiting Schedule Spring Y1 -> Blackberry planted in the Spring and grows until frost. Primocane growth limited by immature root system. Spring Y2 -> Baby fruit crop on immature Y1 primocane growth (now called floricanes) but Y2 Primocane growth doubles (bigger plant) Spring Y3 -> Y2 Primocane growth allows full fruit production and Y3 Primocane growth equals Y2 (biggest plant). Fall Y1 -> More mature potted plant (2 yr) planted but minimal primocane growth due to season length. Fall Y2 -> Limited fruit on Y1 primocane growth (now called floricanes) due to pruning; Y2 primocanes growth increases to allow mature yield in Y3. Fall Y3 -> Full fruit yield from Y2 primocanes and full primocane going into Y4.

I have torn out Prime Jim and Prime Jan years ago. Junk compared to Prime-Ark 45....have now torn out Prime-Ark 45 (which were terrific) to be replaced with Prime-Ark Freedom. These Prime-Ark series are amazing. The reason I took out Prime-Ark 45 is simply because Prime-Ark Freedom is thornless and the berries are bigger(huge). Mike, if you can still change your order, do so. Get one or the other of the Prime-Ark series. Simmonsplantfarm.com has them for 3.00 each at the 100 rate. My pick your own customers are gonna' thank me for changing out to the Prime-Ark Freedom! BTW...with adequate water, the Prime-Ark's pretty much never stop bearing. Last year we had rain all summer (odd for Texas) and my 45's had berries from Spring until the first hard freeze...as in frozen berries hanging on the canes. This was something I had not realized. I do not typically irrigate my Blackberries so I did not realize this potential until the natural rain demonstrated this.

Prime Ark Freedom is an absolute winner for low chill areas. I have two mature plants and another 3 or so babies. All of them are putting out fruit. Here's my primocanes starting to ripen. The berries are huge, much larger than Triple Crown and much better tasting as well. The plant in the pics is in a 10 gallon root pouch on an aquaponics wicking bed. The thing is a beast, I tipped it twice (once when the canes were 3 ft and again when the new canes were 3 ft) and it just keeps growing. The only downside with PAF is, so far, getting some white drupes due to either sun or heat intensity. If the primocane fruit starts getting scorched, I'll try covering it in frost/shade cloth. If the canes keep producing until dec, then it'll have produced for 9 months in our climate.

I've been going back and forth with my order of prime ark freedom. These berries sure sound good. But they're sold out now; next year. I did get vintage, natanala, Caroline, Anne, fall gold, and heritage. Even though I'm in zone 10, you'd think it was zone 7. Vintage just sprouted, Caroline, fall gold, and heritage came up too. Barely any growth on any of them, but fall gold is setting berries. Still waiting for natanala and anne to sprout. If these don't sprout I will buy some new ones next year, the roots were alive when I received them. My heritage were stolen from the community garden. I grew it last year and I really like it. If Caroline or vintage are as productive as heritage I may forego It. I only get the fall crop, but heritage just keeps pushing out berries for months. The taste is just ok for fresh eating from my container garden, Thats why I decided to try planting in the community garden. Still I prefer volume to flavor. Flavor changes every year, but my belly fills on volume. I'm not as good at berries as everyone else on here is. My boysenberry plant looks like a forest in the pot. Hope I get berries this year. Marion had one long cane from last year, it just put out a new cane. Last year I didn't know about pinching so no laterals. Think I will pinch the new cane when it gets a foot tall. They haven't fruited yet. The raspberries grow at a mannered pace that's easy to control. Blackberries on the otherhand seem to leap out of their pots searching for other pots to conquer. So for me blackberry must be grown in a pot near concrete so it can't excape to the wildlife. Fall gold bud in full shade Emerald blueberry shading peas, clover, and beans. Lettuce is going to seed. Boysenberry and beans, varigated solomens seal in the bottom of the pot. The fall gold is growing behind the chard leaf and gets very little sun. The beans have their own trellis in the pot next to the boysenberry but next thing I knew they decided that the preferred the trellis on the boysenberry pot. Now they're climbing in the hanging basket, and then to the moon. Marion berry is wrapped around the window first-time growing blackberry so I didn't pinch,it just has two canes. I just pinched them and got a small amount of branching. Would love to have a twenty foot long thorny branched cane. Well its not the prettiest but I'm eating good. Sunshine blue, and a volenteer tomato,please don't mind my spider webs, that's my only pest control besides ladybugs. I try to keep them in check, but on a rooftop berry garden is a fly eaters paradise, so they keep coming back. Spider mites are bad right now, but they're going for beans, sunflowers and weeds. Those plants all grown so fast who cares. The white flies came and bite the pineapple weed, it was instant death. They've learn to avoid the epazote but since pineapple weed is a native and looks just like pigs lettuce it was a killing field millions of dead white flies. FYI that tomato plant would be full of tomatoes if the local mammals weren't swiping them. I managed to get two amish paste because they filled up on every one of my super sweet pomegranates and sun ripened cherry tomatoes and then snubbed their noses at a bland paste tomato. These little blueberry seedlings are hidden somewhere in that food forest. Sharp, misty, and the ?. Only three inches tall, misty lost all her leaves but everyone else is growing well. Gotta get some peat and surround those tiny little roots. I think misty wants more sun, but at two inches in overcast may, it ain't going to happen. If she were a foot tall it would be better. June gloom is coming so I won't have sun until July. Hang in there Misty!