Hi all,
Could anyone advise me as to what Blackberry,Tayberry,Logunberry,etc,etc would be the best purchase for us,- we like to make wine,jam,fruit cakes,drinks.
The wall area is south facing,and 8ft tall,by 25ft wide.
Also which breed,- there are many to choose from on ken muire`s website .
Thankyou for any help,
Regards,
Mark.
Well as far as I know the latter two are both crosses with Blackberry to produce different fruits. Loganberries look like overgrown Raspberries, as the are dark red and can grow up to an inch long with very careful treatment, they are sweeter than Blackberries, but are cultivated exactly the same way.
Again as far as I know the Tayberry is a similar beast but possibly less thorny if I remember rightly.
All three are good for jams and jellies.
I grow Oregon and Merton thornless blackberry, and use them for the purposes you describe. Both these produce many berries. Also grow loganberry and tayberry.
There is a thornless tayberry called Buckingham, which is good.
Most tayberrries on sale seem to have no variety name and are thorny, they are lovely and sweet. They don't seem to have so many fruit as blackberry or loganberry to me.
There is a thornless loganberry variety you can get called L654 which seems to be the one on sale everywhere now. Loganberries have a sharp taste and are good for jam. They seem to produce many berries.
If you can only plant one I'd go for the loganberry -loganberry jam is what the seraphim will be serving the their cream teas!
You can get blackberries wild anyway.
I've got all 3 on or around my patch -well brambles anyway ;D There's a loganberry growing in among them and I was given a 'well it might be a tay berry or somathing' and a logaberry too -so far the birds have had more off them than I have though,
jeremy
We were given a Tayberry 2-3 years ago, which I trained on posts & wires in me fruit cage. They fruit on last years growth, same as blackberries.
Had a small crop the 1st year on about 5 canes :)
Last year (presumably because the plant was more established) had 10-12 canes which produced around 7lbs fruit. :D
This autumn I cut out the fruited canes, and tied in more than 20 new ones ! ;D
We're not so keen on the taste fresh, but in puddings etc they are lovely, and for jam/jelly ..... fantastic
Given the choice I would go for the thornless version - ours isnt and it **** :-X hurts !
We dont bother with cultivated blackberries as there is more than enough wild in the hedges
In my opinion tayberries make the tastiest jam but I've never grown any of them before this year. My parents have grown loganberries and tayberries and they say they always found the loganberries are harder to keep going whereas the tayberries have fruited for a long time and are still going (that may just be an oddity of course).
I'd agree that you can get blackberries anyway so concentrate on the others.