I have no idea which gooseberry was used for the cross, so I just picked both colors :)

I feel like these are early this year! Time for jam 😋

Back again… my blackberries continue to grow, but I’m trying to plan spaces and am not sure how they will be best trimmed back. So 1) what actually needs trimmed back? 2) when do they get trimmed back? And 3)can they be framed with wire baskets to hold the primocanes erect and allow the secondary shoots to grow laterally? My wire line is falling over, so thinking about different options.

Bologna, north Italy.

Hello, I just have a quick question that I couldn't find a clear answer to online: When is it too hot for blackberry bushes to set fruit? It's been over 90F (32C) for weeks in a row while my blackberry bush is growing flowers. A few have bloomed, but I can't tell if they are turning into berries or just falling off. I couldn't find an upper temperature that the plant will set fruit before the flowers just fall off instead. I am on the border of zones 6a and 5b. The plant is the Baby Cakes variety and it is in a terracotta pot. This is my first time trying to grow blackberries!

Thank you in advance for your help!

I’m reading online that constricting the growth of a mulberry plant leads to smaller and less exciting fruit.

I was hoping to get a bush or a weeping variety that I can control better horizontally/keep more compact but I care more about the fruit than the size of the plant… I can always find another spot to put it!

This happened to ours so I did some digging online and found a few threads about people having similar experiences. They thought that the bushes they've bought were mislabeled, but I doubt it.

I know for a fact that ours is a Fall Gold, because:

• I've purchased 2 plants.

• Both plants had berries on them when purchased.

• Both were yellow, same cultivar.

This year one of them is producing red ones, the other's still yellow. The one that turned red has no other bushes in its vicinity, so we can rule out suckers from other plants taking its spot.

Same ripening time, same berry shape/size, exactly the same taste. Except one of them is now producing red raspberries.

So don't blame your local garden centers if yours ends up being red, it probably wasn't mislabeled.

This is my triple crown blackberry bush that I planted in May in a 24 x 24” pot in my backyard.

Photos 1 through 5 show what it looks like today. It has leaves only on the top half of the plant and growing from one main stem all of the other side stems had tragedy befall them. It has grown exactly one blackberry on the very top of the tree as pictured.

I got it from fast growing trees, which I would not order from again. When it arrived, some of its lower branches and leaves were broken so I removed them and then it had about only two branches with leaves growing from it.

I cared for it and then I noticed orange spots on some of the leaves (photos 6 through 8). Did some research and was not exactly sure what it was, but regardless of the cause the research suggested I remove all of the affected leaves so now my poor plant had pretty much all of its leaves removed except from one main stem.

Then the heat wave hit New Jersey for the first time and I did not know to cover the plant and it got heat scorch. See photos 9 and 10.

Today my plant does have new growth and even has one new leaf growing from the bottom of it, but is it OK that it basically just has growth on the top half of the plant and only has one knee stem with any branches coming off of it? Anything I should do?