Kitchen Garden Forum

I am thinking about growing a thornless blackberry or tayberry on my allotment. My main consideration is flavour - I don't want a tasteless variety like you get in the supermarkets, but something closer to the wild bramble (or better). Any recommendations?
Lowlander

i wouldnt bother with blackberries, but plant a tayberry . the birds love them as well .

Thornless Blackberry 'Buckingham' has very large berries juicy full of flavour and fruits early in August. Yes, Birds love'em. I cover with netting.
I have Tayberry as well but wouldn't be without the blackberry.

Beryl.

Hi Beryl,
I suspect that you have something wrong there in your posting. Buckingham is surely the Tayberry and not the Blackberry.
JB.

Yes,Johnboy you are right I also have the Tayberry Buckingham, but the blackberry is one I bought from Homebase more than 10 years ago with the same name. I am frantically looking for the label as as soon as I can find it will confirm if my memory serves me right.

Beryl.

I've got Himalayian Giant blackberries in our garden. They're embarrasingly prolific but apart from short periods when the berries ripen in intensive sunshine the flavour can be rather bland. Probably wouldn't plant it again but can't face starting again from scratch. It's really difficult when selecting plants like this. My ideal preference would be to actually taste one of the fruits before buying but this is rarely possible.

Sorry folks, can't seem to track that label down for now. That will teach me to tidy up.
I still think a blackberry is well worth growing.thornless don't have the flavour of a wild berry but there are good ones about if you can find one to suit your taste buds.

Beryl.

HI !
Over the years I have tried 3 different varieties (of blackberries), when I discovered "Fantasia" the other two were dug out.
It has the largest, sweetest , best tasting berries of the ones I have had, very vigerous, with nasty backward facing thorns and extremely heavy cropper as well.

I got mine from Dobies, but I think they only sold it for one season, I think Ken Muir sells it now, but with costly carriage on top.
As for Tayberries,I grew one for a number of years, but no one but me ever eat them, and bramble jelly tastes much nicer than tayberry jelly, so it was dug out and dumped!

Blackberries are our favourite outside fruit crop - we've already ordered more plants for the coming year. The fruit is huge and better tasting than any of the wild sort that surround us. The plants are prolific. The birds haven't touched them because we leave them easy access to some autumn raspberries (the yellow, tasteless ones) and they're easy to prune and train.

I am sure that last year somebody posted that the rain had somehow washed the taste out of their Blackberries!
Primrose hits the nail on the head when she says that apart from those ripening in a period of good sunshine the taste can be somewhat bland.
Regretfully this is the same with most berry fruit.
Without sunshine most berries lack sweetness and flavour. This means that if you were to manage to taste the berry prior to buying the plant the following year may be a poor one for sunshine and you would be no better off.
When perfectly ripened in sunshine the taste of the Himalayan Giant Varieties is simply divine as I am sure are the other varieties so I would blame the vagaries in the weather and not blame the plants themselves and certainly not grub something out without testing for a number of years beforehand.
JB.