Putting the berries to bed for the winter

They say marionberries can't be raised any colder than about zone 6. I have had them in Wyoming and Montana for the last 8 or 9 years. They do take a bit more care and some years you won't have berries, but it can be done. When we moved here, 5 years ago, I was down to 2 plants. While they can be grown in this climate, they most definitely do not like moving every 2-3 years. They are really starting to pick up now and I'm getting some suckering going on. Which is WAY cool!

Some things I've learned over the years. The berries can take pretty cold fall temps. For instance, we've had a few nights down to low 20s F and they're fine. BUT spring frosts will kill them. These berries flower and produce berries on second year canes so the object of all this winter stuff is to protect the canes. I have discovered that if only part of the cane survives the winter, you can still get berries. The cane will produce lots of new growth and that growth will flower! The plant itself seems pretty dang tough. One time I had to transplant one in November. The ground freeze settled in a week or so after it was planted. No mulch, it was just on the west side of a chicken shed. The plant made it through and did fine after that. This was a Wyoming winter with well below zero temps.

Also, in this country at least, LOTS of mulch. I mulched these last year with flakes of straw over the whole bed. Last summer and this summer, both, I didn't have to water til late July and then only once These berries like cool and moist (which is not our summers!) and the mulch seems to be the key for happy berries in the summer vs surviving berries.

Today I put the berries to bed and thought I'd show a little how I do it. First, I cut off all the canes that produced this year. That way I know all the canes that make it through the winter are eligible for trellising. I then take out the cattle panel I use for a trellis and lay the canes down neatly in the bed.

Sorry, I didn't think about pics til I had the straw bale in there already. Here's the canes all laid out.

Then I lay down flakes of straw. I prefer older straw that has sat out for a season or two. The flakes stay together better and seem to shed more water, but I don't have any of that this year. This is fresh straw and I'm only going to use it in the first layer since it's fairly scarce and pricey this year. This should help keep weed seeds out of the bed itself since I'll use OLD hay for the rest of the mulch layers.

This is after the first/straw layer.

Those boards are some old 2x12s that were laying around. I used to use straw bales for the wall and then fill that 'box' up to the top with loose straw topped by a layer of flakes of straw, but again, it's hard to find straw up here, so...........you make do with what you've got. I fill to the top of the boards or little more.


And here's the final product, covered with the trellis/cattle panel so as to keep the dogs off of it.
The key seems to be to keep things relatively dry as well as protected from cold. I've noticed that when it gets too wet, the canes rot and the plant doesn't do so good.