The blackberries I have been getting remain quite tart so I ran a couple of tests to establish a baseline.
Titratable Acid (TA) - 9g/liter
pH - 3.3
Brix. - 9%
Taste - tart
I would love to see the Brix level come up to the mid teens as the plants mature but I'm not betting on it and since most of it will go to wine it might be a good thing.
On an unrelated note, I put together a video summing up what I have seen so far:
https://youtu.be/8e-17GNp8eI
Weeks 23 and 24 have been good! Temperatures have dropped from the high nineties to the high eighties and we have been receiving frequent rains. If anyone was following along, I apologize for no blog post last week, but life sometimes gets in the way…..
In the last post I indicated that the heat was taking it's toll: browning leaves, lower fruit production and some small berries. As the rain started and the temperatures dropped in week 23 everything started turning around. By week 24 the plants are undergoing what I would consider an explosive growth spurt.
I counted 289 canes on the top wire this morning. As a whole the hedgerow is about 6' tall with some canes arching up and over at 9' long. In the second picture you can see an 8 footer sticking out. This is starting to concern me on two fronts. First, the wind load is evident in a good breeze with the whole wall of vegetation moving back-and-forth. So far I haven't seen any movement in the posts but most of hurricane season awaits. Secondly, there is so much vegetation that don't know where next year's Primocane's are gonna find their way up through this years growth. I want to do some more research, but I may convert to a "V-trellis" with lateral reinforcement a little later.
These berry clusters are just beautiful and the fruit is so big. The average weight is up to 12 grams/berry or about a half-ounce/berry. After a slowdown last week I'm getting about a 1/2 pound per day and it looks like that is gonna jump up this coming week. I could potentially be getting this kind of production all summer and fall till the first frost which is generally around Thanksgiving. Are my neighbors gonna love or hate me?
Next week should be busy because the muscadines are starting to ripen. For the next 5 or 6 weeks it will be blackberries one day and muscadines the next. I sure am happy that I am a morning person!
Ciao.
Week 22 has shown an increase in 54" or better canes up to 179 so they are obviously still growing. I don't have to tie as much now because it's much easier to just wind an errant cane between the others and the wires to a place where they can grow generally upward. One has to be careful with this particular cultivar as the canes are quite tender and break easily, kind of like asparagus. My other blackberries, both cultivated and wild have a much stronger stem.
Hot would be an apt description of this week with several days being at or above 100. Berry production has dropped off to just a couple of berries a day and I see damage to some of the fruit and leaves. I have been keeping them well hydrated but I think the combination of heat and humidity are causing some issues.
I did come to an epiphany about the fruit ripeness issue of not knowing when to pick. I have noticed that if I wait to pick until a whole cluster has turned black, the chances are good they are ripe. On the other hand, if I wait until the whole cluster is black, then wait a day or so to pick, the berries will dry up. It seems as though a very narrow window is open for the best fruit; probably why the University of Arkansas didn't recommend this variety for commercial cultivation.
Till next week…..
Week 21 and these plants continue to grow despite triple-digit temperatures. I can no longer easily count the middle wire canes because they are so thick. I did count 142 canes at the 54" wire and 19 canes taller than 6'. Most of the 6' canes originate from just below the 36" tipping and most of them appear to be fruiting canes.
I am seeing some damage to a few leaves where they turn brown on the edges. It could be fertilizer burn, some unknown disease, collateral damage from tying the canes to the wires, birds or heat. I'm guessing heat for now but I'll keep watching. Temperatures have been hot with no rain since last Thursday (June 16). There is a soil moisture system installed for the muscadines next door that I have been using to judge when and how much to water to provide both the muscadines and blackberries. The muscadines take about 3 hours of watering to get the soil wet 9" deep so I just mirror that when I water the blackberries. After a big rain I can go about 4 days before watering, then about every 3 days until the next >1" rainfall. I have not hosed-down the surface in quite some time so I feel pretty confident that the irrigation emmiter spacing is good.
I planted each plug 3' apart with a 1 gallon/hr emitter between each plant. As you can see in the two above pictures, I'm starting to get a hedgerow forming with some being quite thick, and others, much like my hair, being a little thinner.
I continue to get about 10 berries a day with an average weight of 10 grams/berry, or about 45 berries/pound. My wife suggested I store them in the freezer until there were enough for a cobbler, but I think I'm just gonna eat them for a while. I was picking every day but I would mistakenly get some berries that were not quite there yet. By waiting two days between picking the berries naturally start grouping together to give a fair amount of fruit that is more uniform in ripeness. I would love to see this stretch out to 4 or 5 days between pickings so when the florocane crop comes in next year I can do something other than pick and process fruit every day, but I ain't putting any money on that. At least that is my working theory 
If I counted right, which is getting hard to do, there are 178 canes at 36" and 52 at 54". The middle is filling in between the plants now with branching both above and below the 36" wire. It is hard to say they are slowing down with the data though my gut feel is that they are. Temperatures have been middle 90's for afternoon highs and expected triple digit air temps by this weekend. I am having to water more frequently but it looks like the drip irrigation spacing is working great now that the plants have gotten bigger.
Here are some of plants that are doing quite well. I didn't catch it in the pictures, but I have had some mockingbird damage to a few of them; nothing major, just a few broken stems. Note the little sign I carved out indicating the species and date? I was having a hard time remembering when I planted stuff so I started making these little signs to help remember.
The berries are really hard to judge ripeness on, at least for now. They grow big and they are soft long before they are ripe. What seems to work pretty well is to just jiggle the berries between your fingers and if they fall into your hand then they are ripe. But even the ripe ones are still pretty tart which is great for jams, jellies, wines, etc, but I sure would like to see them sweeten up more. A little later I plan on measuring the brix levels but the first fruit from a lot of plants isn't as sweet as later fruit, so I'll wait.
