Please forgive me for being a little skeptical, but... where do you live? I am in 5a/5b here in Wisconsin, and nothing I mean NOTHING is budding out yet and today we are expecting another 4 inches of snow. But of course this has little to do with the Zone standards, which brings me to my second question... how cold did it get by you this winter? If memory serves, we never saw temperatures below about -12 F this winter. Another warm winter as in past years it was not unusual to see a couple of -20 F days every winter. It's just these past couple of winters that have been way warm. This year a ton of snow, last year almost zero snow, but both fairly warm nonetheless. Just wonderin'.

Listed as a 5b by a few sites 6a by USDA. Not everything has budded yet. but the last few weeks have been unseasonably warm. Daytimes temps in the high 40's. The lowest low makes almost no difference on bud date so much as survivability :) However the lows this year were only in the single digits versus your -12. Lows currently are just above freezing, with a few 28-29's. You sound like a 5a if your lows are that low on a consistent basis.

I'm in 6A in the northern most point in Kentucky, actually north of Cincinnati OH, and I have had blackberries leafing out for the last several weeks too. The winter has seemed exceptionally long because of a cold November and March but the lowest temperature at my house made it down 7F. That's not usual (usually no lower than -5F) but it's colder than in 2011 when the low was only 16F. Kiowa, Prime Ark 45, and Ouachita are leafing out. Triple crown hasn't as most of the raspberries haven't either, Anne being the only exception.

Made me go back and look at the hardiness zones and if you take a look at this years low temps we are closer to zone 7. However hardiness zones are based off possible lows within a 10 year period if i Iremember right. I remember having some black satins and they were fine for like 5 years before we had a zone appropriate freeze and it killed every single one of them. Anyway i know there were some people that wanted to see how the boysens overwintered in my zone. container growing exposes the roots to on average of one zone colder as the roots are exposed. Anyway spring is on the way definitely and i got a little excited for the season coming up. Cheers everyone.

Not to be rude... but just saying Zone and nothing else doesn't really say anything.... All it says is maximum cold temperature.... You could be in Z5 in Arizona or Maine.... No one would claim that they had anywhere near similar winter conditions....

That's where it's nice to know region or even more detail... 20 miles North of my house is a totally different climate because of mountains - though it's technically the same "Zone".....

Thanks

hence the second post with the description of single digit lows. You are completely correct in that just zone information is fairly sparse. Anyone who wanted the information is invited to pm me. The reason the post was originally put out there is i had a few people who were interested in how the boysenberries would hold up in my zone as they had similair growing conditions to mine. I did not remember who it was and i figured if i posted the information those parties could get ahold of me to get any questions they had answered.