an upright-growing blackberry

As the name suggests, this blackberry crops early, and boasts BIG fruit! And you don't need a lot of space to grow it: it has an upright, self-supporting habit which makes it ideal for smaller areas of the garden or even for growing up a wigwam of canes in a container on the patio. The large, sweet, aromatic blackberries are produced in abundance from early July to August. Plus it's virtually thornless for easy picking and shows good resistance to disease, making it very easy to grow! Supplied in a 13cm pot.

Order Blackberry Navaho Bigandearly Exclusively At Suttons

Related Videos

	#178 Difference between blackberries Navaho Bigandearly and Summerlong Posted by Markus Kobelt | 2012-07-21
	#122 Three advantages of Navaho blackberries (Rubus sectio Rubus) Posted by Markus Kobelt | 2011-06-10 Beautiful and useful
	#22 How to prune Navaho blackberries Posted by Markus Kobelt | 2010-08-03 Easy Gardening with Markus Kobelt: pruning blackberries
	#21 The easy way to cultivate Navaho blackberries Posted by Markus Kobelt | 2010-08-03 Easy gardening with Markus Kobelt

I get it now- the plant differences- from informative video. BigandEarly has a much more concentrated ripening hence lower yield while AllSummerlong has a much longer season but with a drawn out ripening to give its heavier yield: Double the yield of early one in ideal conditions, and negative downside is berries take longer to ripen as season goes on.

I'd reckon when plant is mature with multiple canes from base you could get about 2 or 3 kilos or more from the Bigandearly type which I'm growing now by the way and the AllSummer cultivar 4 to 5kg plus. The BigandEarly has terrific flowers and berries are as described juicy/aromatic which ripen very quickly. Any crazy growth pattern will be because of a new planting or first season establishment of roots. Pity that Suttons does not sell AllSummerLong!!!

Great introduction, but how can it still be blackberry Navaho which traditionally is mid/lsate season, small berries? Navaho is one of those high chill 800hours erect blackberry releases, a bit orange rust susceptible too by all accounts, so this is very interesting if you guys at Lubera have made Navaho superior in terms of disease resistance, berry size/flavour,better yield, lower Winter chill hours requirement, crown cane production and not suckers from roots like most erect blackberry types etc???

I surmise that this Navaho has been open pollinated with another American erect thornless type eg Arapaho(lower chill, better disease resistance) and that is why it now fruits earlier.
The original Navaho in description is described as having orange rust immune from its plant patent description to susceptible to it from other experts.
Some say from reasearch it needs only 590 hours Winter chill hour requirement to acheve rest and then break bud in Spring juxtaposed with 800-900 hours from other trials.
The true expert like Mr Markus suggests in video blogs is the gardeners' experiences. Trust yourself!

Saying that I'd love to know how a great cultivar like this was achieved/made in Europe without genetic manipulation and one to compete wth the Americans!
Jim
 

The original Navaho is still one of the best varieties for garden purposes. and its still the firmest of all Arkansas introductions and the best eating of all thornless balckberry introductions from there.

And its much less susceptible to false mildew as for ex. Loch Ness which is one of the biggest problems in middle Europe for garden growing blackberries.

Thats the reason we have used it for breeding . without any genetic manipulation. We dont use that, and also our friends of the Uiverity of Arkansas dont use these methods.

Markus

Thanks Markus for info.
P.S So what is the Navaho Bigandearly crossed with eg openly brushed pollen from another thornless cultivar? very Interestingly your video blog says three varieties exist:

1.Navaho: original
2.Navaho; Bigandearly
3.Navaho: all Summer long

Looks like it is a trade secret at Lubera, and you will never know how Navaho Bigandearly was done or pollen crossed with which blackberry cultivar!
Rog

I bought this Bigandearly myself. I used to work in the trade, it's nothing out of the ordinary to create a new cultivar, just time and trialling. Basically you must isolate the plant you want to cross and meticulously pollen brush onto receipient plant flowers using the donor pollen. The rest is most tedious and boring analysis of resultant seedlings for fertility/ good traits etc after a long wait of many years in most cases. This plant group family is still called Navaho because the main gene line is Navaho and probably tetraploidal. The test plants usually have daft names too eg NK 418 etc, navaho is often crossed because of strong traits.
I doubt the people at Lubera will tell which plant(s) it was crossed with as it is a newish plant, but you never know.

I wanted the AllSummerlong type but apparently is not sold with Suttons so we bought the popular Bigandearly type instead, but plant seems a little crazy in growth pattern- maybe because we live in the North of England. Flowers are developing and opening now, not in late May month like description says and fruit should ripen in August.

I thought this one was early? What kind of yield can you expect from mature plant Mr Markus and what is yield difference between AllSummer cultivar and bigandearly types?

Great big pink flowers on the 'Big and Early' cultivar, but my main quibble is that it can give a low yield in our very wet UK conditions(no Sun!!) compared to other thornless types like the so called average yield bearer 'Merton Thornless', which crops really heavy for us every year and tastes like a real blackberry from the wild.

I have to agree with the previous poster concerning late flowering comment. Our Bigandearly is still flowering in August and not in May and will produce berries in late August like original Navaho plant. Result of some Freaky UK weather conditions of late?

Hell, why doesn't Suttons sell the more superior and heavier cropping 'Navaho All Summer Long' plant instead?

Why is there a video comparison between 2 cultivars of Navaho when one of the types(the better cropping version by all 'video' accounts) is not readily available for sale in the UK via this website. Beats me!

We produce three different Navaho blackberry varieties and each one has its own advantages. We also sell all three varieties in Switzerland, Germany and Austria...

If you want to buy other Navaho varieties in the UK, then you would have to get in contact with Suttons and convince them to also buy the other varieties from us ;)

The problem is Suttons! I enquired about that other cultivar 'Navaho All Summerlong' too and got directed to their sister company Dobies which sells only Bigandearly, defeating the object because I grow it already and mentioned I only wanted the other type to extend the fruiting season. Lubera is not to blame here!

That said I find Bigandearly to be quite a heavy cropper with some of the most beautiful/biggest pinky flowers -just like the video blogs here say- that I have ever seen on a blackberry plant. I'd love to know how they hybridised it so the flowers get that big??

Would be nice if Suttons offered a bit more fruit variety, after all they keep plugging their relationship with Lubera, yet don't stock all their(Lubera's) plants. We are very happy with our blackberry Thornfree , but I think the video is a bit confusing about the 2 plant Navaho differences to make me purchase an early fruiting blackberry which we wanted.

There's no mention of the flower size differences or colour differences(if any?) in 2 types, is it kilogrammes of fruit in Navaho All Summer Long type or 1 kilo it produces which according to plant nursery founder Markus is double that of BigandEarly plant cultivar? A bit annoying to hear this. It makes it sound a poor relative!

If so that means Bigandearly plant only produces a very meagre 500g of fruit a year. That would put me off buying it as we get about 15pounds of fruit a year already off our blackberry Thornfree. Need a more detailed specific video please! Thanks for listening !

I went to Lubera's European site and used the Google translator for the German. From what I can gather the only major differences between the two Navaho cultivars Bigandearly and the All Summerlong are the flowering times and a higher yield with the latter, because it has a much more protracted ripening season perhaps explained logically as it is several weeks/50% longer in season up to late August?

I also think the flowers are pinker at first bloom before going white with Bigandearly than the other plant. Both probably are more or less the same size.

In my case I much prefer the Bigandearly to get a nice even ripened crop of 3 or 4 weeks and then start picking from our prolific
heavy cropper Blackberry Hull in early August. This year has been VERY disappointing though because of a dry berry condition due to heavy Summer rain and it has ruined half our berry crop giving dried shrivelled hard berries. UK weather sucks bigtime!

No big deal but the plant which some of you are erroneously referring too is 'Summer long' NOT 'All.' I made same mistake myself after watching videos.

Bigandearly for us is showing a really weird growth pattern still flowering now in August and producing small green berries. I'm beginning to think if we have bought the right plant as advertised from Suttons??? We live in Scotland. Any thoughts...?

Can you sen me a picture of Plant and fruits and flowers at info@lubera.com.

To all who are experiencing bad berry season woes go to link below and read. The same happened last year!

www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/29/woeful-2011-blackberry-crops

Many factors are involved e.g dry berry syndrome common in the Marion cultivar or Rosette(Witches Bloom) which can give shrivelled green berries or crazy growth/flowering patterns out of common with that specific cultivar's attributes. Usually uncommon in the U.K. but due to persistent high humidity/showery weather this year perfect ground to ruin your crops. That's why commercial growers grow under tunnels!

Just have 2 questions:

1. Do all the three Lubera Navaho cultivars have the same size flowers and colour?

2. Do Lubera ever intend to develop a primocan blackberry(double cropping) using the blackberry Navaho genotype? Would be a great seller!

Thanks.

1. Yes, all Navaho varieties have the same blooms.

2. Actually we do, watch our new video

#183 Blackberry breeding news - primocane varieties

Regards

Falko Berg, Lubera AG

Nice plant! Very ornamental, main reason why we chose it for our garden. My brother has the American original Navaho in his garden and it suckers from base(not roots) quite freely so how does this one compare: how many canes sprout out from its base each year? Thanks guys.

Come across this blog by chance. Some nice info but is this blog dead as some of the questions raised were never answered like last one? Always great to get full info on a plant before buying from you plant experts. Take care!

Hello, no this Blog is not dead :) we are busy with a relaunch of it to make it look more like our german site www.Gartenvideo.com (which we support a little bit more with question/answers because we obviously sell more plants in german-speaking countries :).

Anyways, the plant in the video is the Navaho Original, the number of shoots which are coming out of the base depends on how you prune them. Please watch video

'#22 How to prune Navaho blackberries'

Regards

Falko Berg, Lubera AG

Thankyou very much Mr Berg. I will go to your German site and use Google translator.