Shift trellis today

A grower asked me this week how our RCA trellised plants were doing. Here is a picture of them today. Other than a few stray primocanes on the wrong side of the trellis, they are fine. Fruit is green and I expect we will see some ripe fruit in a couple of weeks. We have Von, Apache and Ouachita on the trellis.

We did not see any significant winter damage to the the plants on the trellis, or any of the Univ. Arkansas blackberry varieties. We did see damage ranging from none to severe on some germ plasm from the USDA-ARS breeding program in Oregon and on selections that have some less adapted parents.

We have a field day at this station and you can see this trellis and more :
Small Fruit Field Day, June 19,  2014, from 4-8 pm.
Piedmont Research Station, 8350 Sherrills Ford Rd, Salisbury, NC 28147
(704) 278-2624.

Flowers damaged by cold temperatures

Last week, in one of our research plots at the Piedmont Research Station in Salisbury, NC, I noticed that some of the flowers had tiny black centers. This is the result of cold injury to the flowers earlier this spring just as the buds were starting to develop (23F on 3/27/14). The flower in the oval on the left, with the green center will develop into a fruit, while the two flowers in the ovals on the right will not develop into fruit. There were not many damaged flowers and I expect that the total yield will not be impacted by the amount of damage in this picture.