Blackberries....

Anybody grow their own blackberries or do you pick the wild ones? I don’t have any places that I know to pick wild blackberries, so I planted some of my own last spring. When I lived in South Florida, I grew a variety called “Brazos” which did very well, very large berries, but also fairly large seeds as well. The worst part though was the thorns. Every time I would pick blackberries I would come away looking like I had tangled with a cat and the cat had won.

So, when I decided to grow my own blackberries here in Tennessee, I chose a thornless variety called “Arapahoe”. I ordered 10 plants from Ison’s nursery in GA and thought I would have time to prepare a bed to plant them in before they arrived. But, they were shipped almost immediately after I placed the order and the order arrived about 3 days after I called them. Unfortunately I did not have the bed prepared so I just had to dig some holes in the lawn and plant them anyway since the instructions said to plant as soon after arrival as possible.

This the way they looked right after planting (and this one looked best of all, most were single stems, no branches). I planted all ten bare root plants about 2-3 feet apart and hoped for the best. The buckets are there to cover them during the late freeze we had in April.

I did get the grass dug out, added compost and constructed a frame to enclose everything and define the bed. I added some 1” PVC pipe to anchor the frame and to construct an enclosure to cover with bird netting if necessary or add some sort of support to hold the vines off the ground. (They are supposed to be erect type plants not trailing).

After about a month or so the plants started growing and started looking like they might make it after all.

By July they had all sent up primo canes from the roots and I definitely knew I might get some blackberries about June of 2009.

The latest picture was taken after we had 3 or 4 frosts and freezes. You can see how much growth was made in August, September and October.

From what I read, the primocanes that came up this past summer will now be called floricanes and will produce the fruit next year and then must be cut back to the ground. New primocanes will then come up in June/July and produce the fruit for 2010. And on and on (I hope). I am looking forward to picking blackberries and not having to battle the thorns.