If you’re like me, you love blackberries. They are one of my favorite fruits and certainly my favorite berry. Several years ago, I was delighted to find a patch of wild ones growing in my backyard. Since then, I have been cultivating this patch; though they are wild, they do require some maintenance in order to reach their full potential. Blackberries typically grow in partial shade; they like the sun, but not too much. If you have a part of your property that is shaded by trees of any type, it is probably a good spot. They don’t mind acidic soil. It isn’t necessary to rake around them every autumn, but one should not allow the leaf litter to pile too high. Blackberries typically flower in June in the Northeast, and you can expect fruit in July and August. Blackberries are open pollinated and rely on bees, so it’s a good idea to plant brightly colored wildflowers nearby to attract the bees to your property. Because blackberries typically grow wild in the Northeast, there’s a lot of variation among them. You'll see the ubiquitous black type, of course, but you may also find red, pink, and even golden berries. These are all perfectly safe to eat, and delicious. Blackberries don’t require much fertilization to thrive. A bit of epsom salts and some basic fruit and vegetable fertilizer (either liquid or solid) will suffice if you’re concerned about nutrition, but don’t overdo it. Pest control isn’t too much of an issue with blackberries. Their main pests are Japanese beetles and rose chafers, and these can be mitigated for the most part. I have had almost no issues with either. Deer and rabbits may take a liking to the berries, but are generally more interested in the leaves. At least once every two years, in the autumn, you need to cut down your blackberry brambles to the ground in order to get the best yield out of them. The aging brambles can develop fungi and rot, which is unsightly and will ruin your crop. They grow at an astounding rate; by July the next year, you can't even tell they've been cut. And that’s it. Simple, isn’t it? This is one of the reasons I love blackberries; they require almost no maintenance! Just pick and enjoy!
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AuthorI'm Ian Wilson, a slightly eccentric amateur horticulturist bumbling his way through the garden. Archives
October 2021
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