Thornless blackberries

[Gwenoakes]

I planted two of the above bushes just over a year ago and they have worked their way up a trellis and are absolutely full of fruit now, just need to ripen.
I cannot wait for blackberry and apple pies and crumbles. Hopefully I will get them before the blackbirds do.
Just had a few of my tomatoes too and very nice they are. One happy bunny here.
Have grown some suede from seed and transplanted them into a raised bed so fingers crossed they will produce a tasty veg. We have already had some of our early potatoes and they were nice.
Hopefully next year now I have a greenhouse I will be able to grow a lot more veg from seed and also some Tidal Wave Petunia's I have got the seeds for. Has anyone else had Tidal Wave before?

[albertajune]

Interested in your thorn less blackberries. I have loads of wild ones growing in front of my home but take ages to pick because of the sharp thorns. Are yours bush or do they climb? Might get some next year.

[HedgeHugger]

I bought a thornless blackberry a few years ago. I ended up pulling it up because the fruit really didn't taste good at all. Looked great, decent sized berries, no flavour.
Hopefully yours tastes better!
Can't remember the variety. Tesco had a clubcard deal on to buy 3 bushes, a red gooseberry (the chickens killed that), the thornless blackberry, and I think it was blueberry bush (I killed that).

[Gwenoakes]

Mine climb, June, but cannot remember the name of them.
My blackberries are going to taste wonderful, HH, I can feel it in my water. LOL

[Gwenoakes]

Well, we are still picking blackberries and they are not too tart........honest, HH.
It is a race between us and the blooming wasps tbh, there are hundreds of them, so we only pick much later on in the evening.

[Gwenoakes]

Now have 13 containers of the berries in the freezer and still more to pick.
Have been reading up and it says to cut the trailers off after it has finished producing berries, so that will be the next job.

[Gwenoakes]

We have just sampled some blackberry/apple pies and crumbles that I have made with our own thornless blackberries and they are brilliant, I have not added anymore sugar. I think leaving them till they were almost over ripe worked better and therefore not too tart.
I collected 18 tubs of them and still have quite a few left in the freezer for future use.
We have been buying Bramley apples at 50p a kilo, peeling, coring stewing and then freezing as we have none of our own apple trees since moving.
We have also got a fruit growing on the passion flower I planted about a year ago, so am going to leave it for a while, pick and see what it tastes like. We absolutely love passion fruit, but it is expensive, so only have as a treat on fruit salad.

[albertajune]

You have certainly done well Gwen. There is nothing more satisfying than picking and cooking your own grown produce.

[Mo]

I'm surprised you don't live near someone with a Bramley tree. I give mine away left, right and centre (so if you ar e passing through mid-Cheshire...)

[Gwenoakes]

I'm surprised you don't live near someone with a Bramley tree. I give mine away left, right and centre (so if you ar e passing through mid-Cheshire...)

LOL, Mo. We do live near people and unlike me justI giving them away they don't, they sell them instead.

[Mo]

Money changes hands for some of mine too - one dance club has a charity bring-and-buy, they also raise funds for choir. So the windfalls and 'won't keeps' go to the other dance clubs.

[Gwenoakes]

Thought I would update this thread.
My blackberries are growing at a very fast rate and we have put a wire cage over them, with holes not too small, so allows the bees in, but not the blackbirds etc. There really are hundreds of flowers on them, so looking forward to a better crop than even last year.
I have grown red and white onions which are quite tasty, also salad onions. Got them all at half price from Home Base, so am chuffed about that. I have picked some green beans and frozen them also had lots of gooseberries which I have stewed and then frozen.
The rhubarb has produced 3 good amounts so far with more to come, I love stewed rhubarb.
I have had loads of lettuce, cucumbers and the tomatoes are doing quite well too.
I saved some sweet pea seeds off plants from last year along with french marigolds. The sweet peas did really well producing loads of plants but the french marigolds..........I got only two plants from them. The sweet peas are perennials so will come back year after year, but the downside is they have no fragrance, but they look pretty.
The wallflower and sweet william seeds did well too, so lots of those plants.
I tried taking cuttings from the hydrangeas that we have, did it all as Monty on Gardeners World said and got nothing, so a few weeks ago I took more cuttings, which was at totally the wrong time of year and now have 9 little plants with a fairly good root ball, so make sense of that if you can.

I am selling my surplus chickens eggs to Clare's clients in the canine hydrotherapy centre and also have frozen some for omlettes and cake making. The chickens have laid really well this year, there are only 7 of them and apart from the going broody episodes which I now have a good handle on, i.e. popping them into a large dog cage in their hen house as soon as I notice they are trying to sit. I have two in the cage at the moment, usually they are only in there for 24/48 hours if I catch them earliy enough.
Sorry about the epistle.
How is everyone else getting on with their growing?