Summer tissue sampling for fertility recommendations

Here is a re-post from last year, its almost time for you to take your leaf tissue samples

Now is the time to do some tissue sampling in blackberry. Plant tissue samples will help you determine needs and adjustments. IN NC, samples should be taken after fruit harvested from the plants. Leaves from the 3-5th node of the primocane plant should be sampled and sent to NCDA and they will make recommendations for the following season. Keep your records so you can see if there are trends in your fields. Below are the recommended levels of macro and micronutrients.

More about how to determine most recently matured leaf (MRML) is at http://www.ncagr.gov/agronomi/pdffiles/sampta.pdf

Nutritional Status change for primocane MRML about 10 days - 2 weeks after harvest
NCDA	%			ppm
N	2.4-3		Fe	50-300
P	0.15-0.6		Mn	50-250
K	1-2		Zn	30-46
Ca	0.5-1		Cu	7-15
Mg	0.3-0.5		B	30-50
S	0.13-0.6		Mo	0.04-2

Blackberry flowers to fruit: most fruit ripe or picked! (as of July 17)

For each cultivar, we tagged 5 flowers in the same field. As the season progressed, we had wind damage, picker damage and other sorts of damage. So in most cases, we ended up with less than 5 ripe fruit.  

As of July 17, most of the fruit we labeled in the field has been harvested. Only 2 Von samples were still in the field. 

Based on our guesstimates* of harvest dates, the number of days from flower to fruit are:

Natchez 51

Osage 44

Ouachita 51

Navaho 51

Von 58

* these are based on only 3-4 flowers, so what you may see in your field may vary. 

Thanks to Abby Whitaker and Daniel Shires for their help with data collection and taking pictures on all these dates. 

Blackberry flowers to fruit project: More ripe fruit July 3

Pictures from last week, July 3, show that Osage was picked, Natchez and Ouachita were ripe, Navaho is red and Von is still green. We have five fruit of each cultivar labeled, so there is some variation in ripeness. Once all fruit is black, we will average he number of days that it took five fruit to get from flowers to fruit in 2014.