Kitchen Garden Forum

Hi

I have a loganberry and I am not impress by the fruits, taste ok but a pain too pick, get squash when you pull them and the core is nearly impossible to take off.

I am thinking of removing it and replacing it by a good old blackberry!

I know they are everywhere and free but I was thinking of a thornless one with big fruits.

what do you think?

Many thanks

Amo

Hi Amo, perhaps you are picking them slightly underripe and too soon, I have loganberries and the fruit come off easily when dark red and ripe.

I agree with NB. If the fruit doesn't come away from the stalk it's not properly ripe. A thornless Tayberry is a good alternative. Has much larger berries.
Thornless blackberries are good to. If you have the space why not grown all 3. but you will still need to be patient and pick when ripe though.
Beryl.

Thornless varieties can develop thorns over time - ours did.

Interesting, not heard that one before. Was it grafted from prickly stock?
I've had the thornless for 20 years or more and no troubles.

Beryl.

Mine too 5 yrs and still thornless.both the laganberries and the blackberries.

No idea what it was grafted on as it is really old now - over twenty years.

~Re the thorns, I bought a Tayberry last year on special offer I think from this magazine. It said it was Buckingham thornless. It is covered in vicious thorns. Have I been sold a dud, or might it grow out of it?

I can't see how a plant will grow out of thorns really.

Mine is the Buckingham Thornless. I think they have just sent you the wrong plant either that or the offer might have been over subscribed. Either way you should have been told and I would have thought you have cause to complain if not satisfied.

Beryl.

There is a Buckingham Tayberry and there is a Buckingham Tayberry Thornless regret to say two different plants.
Even the thornless variety is known to throw out the occasional thorned spur but generally only the odd spur.
The Thornless variety was a sport of the ordinary Buckingham Tayberry so I suppose that it is possible for a thornless to revert thorned plant.
JB.

Thanks for that. It hasn't fruited this year, but if it tastes good it can stay, thorns or no thorns. Might move it to grow on the fence to keep burglars out!

Hi Plumpudding,
I have two Buckingham Tayberry plants as they were bought some time before the thornless variety appeared and I am told that the original has a better taste than the thornless. How this is I cannot say because ostensibly they are the same stock and I am not a connoisseur of Tayberries. I very much like what I have and when the stock on one plant started to lose vigour I took layered cuttings of the other one gave many plants away to the family. I have done this on a regular basis and the plants I now have are probably the fifth generation. I suspect that the soil depletes in nutrition however much you feed them and the new plants have always gone into a new position of well prepared soil.
JB.

Thanks Johnboy, I'm feeling happier about it now and it is growing very well on a trellis so it's easy to tie in and keep under control.