Week 21 and these plants continue to grow despite triple-digit temperatures. I can no longer easily count the middle wire canes because they are so thick. I did count 142 canes at the 54" wire and 19 canes taller than 6'. Most of the 6' canes originate from just below the 36" tipping and most of them appear to be fruiting canes.
I am seeing some damage to a few leaves where they turn brown on the edges. It could be fertilizer burn, some unknown disease, collateral damage from tying the canes to the wires, birds or heat. I'm guessing heat for now but I'll keep watching. Temperatures have been hot with no rain since last Thursday (June 16). There is a soil moisture system installed for the muscadines next door that I have been using to judge when and how much to water to provide both the muscadines and blackberries. The muscadines take about 3 hours of watering to get the soil wet 9" deep so I just mirror that when I water the blackberries. After a big rain I can go about 4 days before watering, then about every 3 days until the next >1" rainfall. I have not hosed-down the surface in quite some time so I feel pretty confident that the irrigation emmiter spacing is good.
I planted each plug 3' apart with a 1 gallon/hr emitter between each plant. As you can see in the two above pictures, I'm starting to get a hedgerow forming with some being quite thick, and others, much like my hair, being a little thinner.
I continue to get about 10 berries a day with an average weight of 10 grams/berry, or about 45 berries/pound. My wife suggested I store them in the freezer until there were enough for a cobbler, but I think I'm just gonna eat them for a while. I was picking every day but I would mistakenly get some berries that were not quite there yet. By waiting two days between picking the berries naturally start grouping together to give a fair amount of fruit that is more uniform in ripeness. I would love to see this stretch out to 4 or 5 days between pickings so when the florocane crop comes in next year I can do something other than pick and process fruit every day, but I ain't putting any money on that. At least that is my working theory 
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