I wonder what variety of thornless blackberries you grew? I grow Triple Crown thornless blackberries and they are wonderful and huge, as long as I prune them well.

I've got a pair of thornless blackberry bushes in my back yard and they produce big, beautiful, and tasty berries every year. I'm not sure of the variety since they came with the house. Also I'm on the west coast.

Sorry to hear of your unrewarding experience. I grow Arapaho, Ouachita, and Prime-Ark Traveler in heavy clay soil in Texas, and although they took their time getting established, the fruit is plentiful and sweet. The trick, in my case, is to wait until the berry has been black for a couple of days before picking it.

Doyle's are good, but you have to pick them dead ripe. A day early and their sour, a day late and their mush.

Good luck with the future plans

We have eight varieties of blackberries at our farm, four thorny, four thornless. Ensure you are pruning them correctly as that can impact flavor, among other things. Our Natchez plants are very productive with large berries, but if they overcrop, the flavor will be off. The leaves are important as well as the ratio of berries. Make sure they are in full sun. My favorites are Natchez, Ponca, and Caddo. If I could only plant one, it would probably be Natchez. Once you fill a shell with those big berries, anything smaller is just more work :-) I order from NourseFarms near you.

The first year I grew a thornless raspberry they tasted terrible and I was going to rip them out. The second year they were much better. When I moved across state I bought more, I will see if it's the same. No thorns is really nice..

i would like to know what variety you planted ?

We grow thornless blackberries and they do great. They produce heavy the entire month of June, the berries near the top of the bush that get all day sun seem to be the largest and sweetest although we eat them all. None of them really taste bad. I catch the tips in buckets of soil in the fall, and by spring I've got new bushes growing in the buckets. Cut them free from the mother plant and you're in business! They sell out quickly on marketplace.

Nice video.

I planted Bushel and Berry's 'Baby Cakes' and I the same experience. Scant fruit with absolutely no flavor. I don't know why they're being sold in nurseries. Fortunately for me I planted them in large pots. I replaced them with black currants from Raintree Nursery.

had 20 planted, i adjusted the soil ph first and made certain the area had no tress that were juglone producing, fertizlzed with horse manure. had great tasteting berries the first year. then the two oldest horses figured out that working together they could unlock the barn gate , then unlocked the garden gate pulled the plants up from the roots and ate everything. had enuff money in that patch to buy 2 tons of stock and stable , or 7ton of pairie hay . wife said," I told you my horses were smart."

So sorry about your thornless blackberries. You probably should have done some research on them before planting them. Because I love blackberries so much, (more than any other berries), I probably would have put up with the thorns. Once I went picking them in the wild, (sort of edge of a University campus), came back to the dorm with cuts and scratches all over, but I didn't care. Those blackberries were wonderful.

Lovely stream

Have you tried looking at the bottom of that little waterfall for gold? That's a perfect catch.

i had same experience with 2 or 3 varieties of thornless. the thorned ones produced great but were brutal to pick.

I planted a bunch of blackberries last year. I haven't gotten any berries yet, but they're loaded with green berries now. I was told by a local horticulturist that thornless berries will usually have a lower yield than the thorned varieties. I've got some Kiowa blackberries planted next to some Prime Ark Freedom blackberries. At this time, I can say that the thorns on the Kiowa bushes are vicious, while the Prime Ark is thornless. So far I can see that the thorned bushes appear to have a larger crop at this time. I've got some Black Gem thornless blackberries in my back yard that just have a few blossoms on them. They might be a disappointment, regardless of the doctors in the University of Arkansas, who developed them, saying that they were their favorite. One other thing about the Kiowa... The berries are huge = averaging about 2 inches long. I hope they also taste good. I'll find out.

I dug some thornless blackberry plants up at a friend's house about 8 years ago and planted them in my garden. They produced the very next year and are still going strong. I've keep them to about 14 plants. Last year I must have had at least 12 gallons of berries. Love them.

i recommend you try multiple different varieties to find the ones that work best for you

This is in TN for reference.

I suppose not all thornless varieties are the same. We planted a few Triple Crown thornless blackberries at my dads place after taking diggings from my sisters house and both places are doing fantastic. Loads of sweet berries on every bush. And they keep trying to grow side shoots which we dig out and either give away or sell to others. Mostly giving away.

I must have your variety, lol. Mine has hardly gotten a chance to fruit because of deer pressure in the spot I planted it, not to mention poor soil and weed competition because it was meant to be a temporary planting just to get it out of the pot, but when it did manage to make some fruit a few years back, it tasted terrible. What's strange though, is that the same plant made fruit while still in it's pot a year after it should have been planted (this was something around 10 years ago), and made fruit that tasted decent. I think the poor flavor might be related to stress or nutrients, heavily cultivated plant varieties are often heavy feeders, such as the nice looking large delphiniums. I'm not giving up on my variety yet, one of these days I'll give it a better place to grow and see if the flavor improves. Be prepared to smother that area if you want to wipe out your blackberries, because they easily regrow from a piece of root left in the ground.

I've had the same problem with the wild blackberries in my backyard. When we moved in 6 years ago they were delicious. The last couple of years though they've had no taste whatsoever. Wild Wineberries growing in the backyard however still tastes delicious.

Do you know what variety you planted? There are many thornless varieties. I have several Black Satin thornless blackberries, which make a good amount of delicious, sweet, large fruit. They are barely fertilized, and occasionally watered (in drought ridden California). I keep them pruned pretty hard and tied to a hog panel fence, because they are alongside the driveway. Perhaps you chose a poor variety, or they were getting too much nitrogen or something.

My thornless are big as my thumb. I have to prune them well.

That site does not get enough sun for blackberries most likely.

Id be real cautious about building a workshop so near a creek unless its elevated well above the flood zone. As for the berries you didnt mention any kind of soil testing. But it sounds to me like they had an over abundance of growth promoting minerals and insufficient minerals supporting reproduction. And based only on the tree shadows in this video, may not have gotten enough direct sunlight. In short, struggling plants generally dont produce great tasting fruit.

Why put a building up and block that beautiful waterfall? How about a gazebo next to the water?

I have three varieties of thornless blackberries planted. This will be their 2nd year and I'm anxious to see what the fruit will be like. I have pruned them to two main primocanes per plant and have them all very contained along a wire. Expecting one variety, Prime-Ark Freedom to produce in late June and the other variety, Chester to fruit in August. (I just realized that I've forgotten what the third variety is. I have a tag somewhere.). The Chester ("Great all-around blackberry - firm but not tart. It is the most productive plant of its kind that you can grow in the upper Midwest") is a variety that does well in colder climates so I'm hoping for success here in NE Ohio. The Prime-Ark Freedom' variety is interesting because it "is a cultivar of blackberry developed by John R. Clark at the University of Arkansas and is the first thornless primocane-fruiting blackberry ever developed". For those not familiar, a primocane is the first year growth canes. I've done a lot of research into these varieties and worked really hard setting them up and pruning so if there is no flavor I'm going to be really disappointed. Our little farm is surrounded by wild blackberries but I'm not crazy about thorns.

Reminds of buying those big beautiful raspberries in the grocery store and they have absolutely no flavor.

I can grow raspberries but not blackberries

I had thornless blackberries for a number of years. Carefully chosen variety suppressed to be full of flavor. Sour, and tasteless. Just awful. Ripped them all out and still rip out stragglers that crop up every year. I'll stick with my tasty raspberries, thank you very much.

Black berries are my favorite to grow because im a lazy gardener. I love perennials and black beries will grow in any soil and any ph. And they are considered a weed. So its impossible to kill or mess up as a beginner. Prune if you want. But i recommend ferilizing. Thats is all. Just feed them, so they feed you. If you were under fed you wouldnt taste good either 😂

Tried thornless blackberries over 20 years ago. Beautiful berries but completely tasteless! I’ll stick with the wild ones😆

Bum deal. I planted three "dug up" thornless Blackberries from my friends yard, planted them and I had more berries than I could eat on year two.

Good thing I only bought one. If it's good I can just take cuttings. Hope it's good

SORRY BRO..............KEEP ON TRYING AS SUCH IS A FARMERS LIFE