Experimental Farm Network - Thornless Blackberry Seeds

The thornless trait makes growing and harvesting blackberries so much easier than their thorny wild relatives. But while a handful of thornless cultivars are available on the market, there's definitely a need for more (each has its weaknesses). We're not sure which cultivar these seeds come from — we were given a pile of rooted growing tips from our friend John Lockwood when we first started farming in Elmer (they were taking over a section in his community garden) — but they are productive and delicious. We provide literally no care whatsoever, and they keep rewarding us with copious amounts of fruit all summer. It's our hope that by offering these seeds for sale some of you out there will develop some new thornless blackberry varieties that we can add to our population someday. Whatever the variety of the plants that produced these seeds, we can say that they regularly cause visitors to the farm to re-think their dislike or indifference toward blackberries. Nothing beats a field-ripened blackberry on a hot summer's day!

GROWING TIPS: The biggest challenge with these is likely to be germination. Since we want to get you the freshest material, we're selling these as botanical samples (since we don't have time to pre-treat them and do an accurate germination test). Blackberry and raspberry seeds generally require cold moist stratification to germinate — and scarification (nicking or scratching the seed coat) doesn't hurt. We recommend scarifying and then cold moist stratifying (in slightly moist peat moss or sand) in the refrigerator for 12 to 16 weeks before planting.