Blackberry flowering

Blackberries are in full bloom or beyond at the Piedmont Research Station today. Here are some shots  taken from the RCA trellis plots. All cultivars have some flower kill as can be seen by the black dots in the centers of the flowers. Flowers with those blackened centers will not develop into fruit. We will take viable flower counts next week.

Apache

Oucahita

Von

Bud removal to mimic freeze damage in the spring

This spring we set up demonstration trials at 2 locations in the state to monitor what would happen if we mechanically removed buds at critical times during flowering. We wanted to mimic what may happen when we get bud kill to flowers in the spring due to freezing temperatures. One of the trials is at the Sandhills Research Station in Jackson Springs, Josh Mays is overseeing the trial on the cultivar Ouachita. He removed buds at four times in the spring, has taken lots of data and lots of pictures. Here is a short video of what we saw today. He will be sharing more at grower meetings this upcoming year.

The other trial is at the Mitchem Farm in Vale NC. I'll post about that one later...