My blackberries wake up rather slowly. They haven't leafed out yet. My raspberries have though

The hard winter down here did a real job on all my berry bushes too. Young plants often don't recover but they will normally bounce back if they were well established first and the root base didn't freeze hard. You normally get some new cane growth but this year's crop of berries is lost.

We might get a few blooms and berries later in the summer from the new canes but the old damaged canes need to be cut back - you can usually find the point on each cane where the dead growth will snap off - prune the cane a couple of inches below that point so you are well into live growth. Then give them a good feed a week to 10 days later.

Good luck.

Dave

Another zone 5 here. I agree with Cara Rose. My berry plants are taking their time. I have a blueberry bush in a container thats done well thepast couple of years. It looks like its struggling but still alive.

Of course, I'd follow any advice Dave gives! He's the "Radagast" of gardening.

Arapaho is supposed to be cold hardy, and raspberries usually are more so than blackberries so I don't think a little snow would hurt them. My Triple Crown are leafing out slowly (I covered them with burlap this winter and I don't think I lost any) but the raspberries are almost fully leafed out. Give them a little time.

How cold did it get? If your buckets were outside during the winter and they survived that, I would think they'd survive even 30's now.

Blackberries often get winter-killed back badly in zone 5. Raspberries do not normally get damaged.

My raspberries are leafed out and growing new canes already. The canes of my blackberries are almost certainly winter killed.

Rodney

Thanks for the advice guys. Not concerned about getting berries this year since we're going to be moving in the middle of the summer. Just don't want them to be dead. We got some wonderful berries off of them last year.

In your new place, you could try some fall-bearing raspberries. You cut any old canes to the ground in spring. New, very sturdy canes will come up and start bearing around 01 Sept and keep bearing until frozen under.

I prefer to get two crops a year.

We originally grew the fall-bearing type to get by the Japanese beetles. But I also noticed, because of the cool dry air, we got by the mold, could let them ripen on the plants, and birds were starting to make other plans. We never even tried for a summer crop, and ended up digging up our summer raspberries.

I'm thinking of pulling out my fall-bearing raspberries b/c of SWD.