Blackberries and Boysenberries Help, please!

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desert_witch Lucerne Valley, CA(Zone 8a) Mar 04, 2006

Okay. So I've read every post on blackberries I could find on this forum, and since many of them were quite dated, I thought it might be okay to start a new thread. I live in the High Desert, CA, and although we're between USDA zones 7b and 8a, we also get a good month or more over 100 degrees F in the summer. They are supposed to be "Southern Performers" according to Henry Fields, where I got them. (ditto for the boysenberries, below) I just planted 3 Chester Thornless Blackberries in the larger of our (so far) 2 gardens (about 3,000 sf). Wow! After reading about how much they can spread, I'm soooo glad I put them in the pumpkin/melon/corn garden.

Now, the weather turned nasty and windy and rainy before I could get the 3 Thornless Boysenberries in. I put the roots in water and have changed it daily for 2 days now. Will this be okay for a few more days, or should I pot them??

Also, in the whole forum I only found 2 mentions of boysenberries, so could sure use some advice on them. So far I've read that they should grow up and out, unlike the blackberries that spread laterally. Is this true? Will they take over my 1,000 sf kitchen garden if I plant them along the north fence there?? help, please?

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Dyson Rocky Mount, VA(Zone 7a) Mar 04, 2006

No experiance w/boysenberries at all - don't know what they look or taste like? interested in seeing the replies.

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desert_witch Lucerne Valley, CA(Zone 8a) Mar 09, 2006

Hey, Dyson. Here's what I've been able to find.

Boysenberry
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A boysenberry is a cross among a blackberry, red raspberry and loganberry. It was created by Rudolph Boysen, and first commercially cultivated by Walter Knott.

In the late 1920s, George Darrow of the USDA began tracking down reports of a large, reddish-purple berry that had been grown by a man named Rudolf Boysen in Napa, California. He enlisted the help of Walter Knott, a Southern California farmer known as something of a berry expert. Knott hadn't heard of the new berry, but agreed to help Darrow in his search.

The pair soon learned that Rudolf Boysen had abandoned his growing experiments several years earlier and sold his farm. Undaunted by this news, Darrow and Knott headed out to Boysen's old farm, where they found several frail vines surviving in a field choked with weeds. They transplanted the vines to Knott's farm where he nurtured them back to fruit-bearing health. Walter Knott began selling the berries at his farm stand in 1935 and soon noticed that people kept returning to buy the large tasty berries. When asked what they were called, Knott said, "Boysenberries". As their popularity grew, Mrs. Knott began making preserves which ultimately made Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California world famous.

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