Blackberries
Overview
Blackberry – Rubus fruticosus
Season- August to October
Although the wild blackberry has a much better flavour than the hybrid garden cultivars, it is asking for trouble if you are tempted to dig one up from the hedgerow and plant it in your garden. They are extremely vigorous and will over run the site during the course of one summer. Nowadays there are many cultivated forms of blackberries that have been especially bred to be grown in gardens. Some are thornless which makes picking much more pleasant, some are very vigorous growers and must be given plenty of room to grow. Most of the hybrid blackberry plants available today have been developed from American and European types of blackberries.
The American plants are vigorous and have more thorns than the European strains and they fruit earlier than the European varieties. The berries are long and black and have a sharp flavour.
The European plants are also very vigorous making them unsuitable for growing in small gardens but some of the thornless cultivars are less vigorous. Both of them have the traditional wild blackberry flavour.
How to grow
Before any planting is carried out a training system of posts and wires must be erected to tie and train the blackberry canes against. Set two stout end posts at least 5metres /15ft apart. The post need to be 2metres/6ft above ground and have 60cms/2ft firmly buried in the ground. Fix the lowest straining wire 45cms/18ins above the soil level and two more tiers of wires, one near the top of the post and the other in the middle. The blackberry will be planted at the centre of the framework.
Planting season – October to November. Prune the canes as low down as possible. There will be no fruit in the first summer, the canes must be trained into position to crop in the second summer
Distance between plants 5metres/15ft
Distance between rows 2metres/6ft.
Pruning established plants- At the end of summer the older fruited wood has to be removed completely. During the summer select about 6 fresh young new canes to tie along the lowest wire to be tied in to replace the old canes. (See diagram).
Blackberries can easily produce shoots or rods that can be up to 4.5metres/15 feet in length in one season. Don’t shorten the new canes during the summer you will have to tie them in before pruning them to fill the wires.
To sustain this amount of growth top dress around the plants and between the rows with a general fertiliser in March.
How to Harvest
Click here for a video that gives some blackberry harvesting tips harvesting blackberries