Anyone know anything about growing blackberries? I want to transplant them from the wild. Do you cut the stem that grew berries off at the bottom or just where it branches out? Thanks!
i wuld just dig up some small plants. they tend to spread by the roots pretty easily. of find some rassberries to grow. as far as taking cuttings and rooting them, that can get involved, and i dont how green you thumb is.
I think it would be quicker if you cut a plant back and dug it up and transplanted it. Blackberries spread like crazy sending roots underground and popping out somewhere else. Also where a branch touches the earth they send down roots too. I have em all over the place, berries should be ripe in a month or less. The best time to transplant them is January or so. u don't need to be careful digging em up a little bit of roots will do. peace Honor
I've been growing blackberries here at the farm for a few years. They are quickly becoming my top money maker. Blackberries are about the strangest plant I know of (but what do I know?). The plant itself, the roots or crown, are perennial, but the stems, or canes, are bi-annual. As the crown spreads under ground, it sends up canes. The canes grow all season, then are basically dormant overwinter. The next year those canes will flower and fruit, while new canes come up. After fruiting, the canes live out the rest of the year and die in the winter. I cut off those canes after the harvest, more water, sun, etc., for the plant and the growing canes (more, better fruit next year). For working with blackberries I suggest welder's gloves and extra long handle tools. I agree 100%, and amen on the "don't need to be careful digging em up" part. You're not dealing with a delicate plant. The first year you won't get ANY fruit. The second year you'll get some, and much more the third year. They're a long term project, so select and prepare the planting site with that in mind. Once they're well established, you can divide them and have a lot of blackberries in a few years. If you're going to make that much of a long term effort, I suggest you look into commercial plants. The University of Arkansas and others have developed varieties that are very, very much better than wild. Wild blackberries have few pest and disease problems, the commercial varieties have less. Their berries are a lot sweeter and very much bigger. The berries can average 12 to 14 grams per berry. That means that it only takes about 40 berries to make a pound. You can pick several pounds in a few minutes. Some are even thornless!! Check with your local county agent, find out the recommended varieties for your area, then do a lot of shopping. Prices vary A LOT. Ask the county agent where to get free plants. Well, I've done it again, filled a page. I'm sorry, I can't seem to be brief. Anyway, hope this helped. Peace, poor_old_dad
Thanks for all the imput. Basically I have blackberries all over my 10 acres. Besides my lawn, the place is covered. I just thought for the sake of my little one and possibly to get more fruit, I'd move some a few yards away into my garden. Maybe it'd be better to leave them alone and prune them where they are -- I don't know. They're really hard to get at -- covered in weeds, growing all over each other, etc..
ooo, they may overtake your garden. start cultivating a nice natural wild patch, then mow a lane through it. or maybe make a nice border around your garden with them, let them get real big and they may keep the critters out. (as theyll be munchin blackberries and gettin thorned.)
the gardening book suggests you cut a plant early in the spring to the 3 largest stalks and then train them onto a trellis.
hi I am knew here but a long time gardener . I understand you allready have the wild patch but if you have a few dollars the thornless varieties are far superior to the wild ones I grow arapaho and navaho varieties that came from starts from raintree nursery they are great . there is a lot of imfo. on growing and setting up a patch I use clothes line posts for my end supports and you cut them at 4 ft. then they grow latterals I mulch with scrap paper cardboard carpet leaves and grass for weeds they take good care of themselves but it is not to much work to get the patch set up. I also recomend the golden rasberrys they are easy care also. I have more but just a brief note . Rick
ya think about it ink from newsprint and chemicals in carpet may not be such a fine thing to mulch with, I do have knowledge that plants absorb thru their roots things like calcium if you put it in the ground, hat e to think I'd be munching on some ink or carpet chemicals sticking a blackberry in my mouth. honor cardboard too has glue in it used to make it. u can get a flatbed of wood chips for about 75 bucks from the mill here, maybe that is an idea for mulching, but from what I have seen the blackberries here in almost pure sand are making this place look like a haunted castle surrounded by thorny vines
hi yes you are right about some of the "things" that may be present in the paper stuff and sorry sometimes a little tired and I type slow. the advice poor old dad is giving is more like I would post he was right on the commercial vareitys are top notch several were created in your area for your your area. and you bet the wood chips are my fav and will create a great soil base after a yr or so. I just started a new patch because of the mistakes I made on the first one and the "wild" row of black rasberrys that I had growing next to my arapaho patch took over and are now mixed in pretty thich and they will be hard to control . I wanted to make you some links on here but was,nt sure about the rules ?? there is a commercial blackberry operation a pick your own farm here that we could all learn from it was started on a shoestring and is really solid meaning they used heavy duty posts ,wire, and a LOT of mulch and it is fairly low matinence. he was right I always check the county folks first and the master gardeners they love to give out imfo. I speak to quite a few gardeners in your area and I know one lady and her husband who spent 2 summers and a lot of work with brush cutters and a tractor trying to remove a lot of that wild berry bushes just so they could get around their property and they have since planted the thornless types of berrys . Rick
Rick, thanks for the kind words. Yeah, clearing the wild plants is a pain, really a pain. I used fire then several passes with an 8horse Troy-bilt during the dryest part of winter. On my berries I use LOTS of pine straw mulch... it lasts a long time, packs tight, and add acid to the soil. Plus I have 300 or 400, 28 year old pine trees. As far as links go, I've always done it. A lot of folks recommend: http://www.alcasoft.com/pense/ Their blackberry plants are: 5 to 25 plants - 1.60 Each. Not bad, when you consider these plants will last many, many years. I've seen people pay 2 to 4 dollars for a tomato plant that'll last just one season. I have a lot more links, if anyone is interested. Peace, poor_old_dad
yeah I'll throw in a reason why I would rather plant red raspberries than blackberries.......and thanks for the source of red raspberry plants ole dad post links to your hearts content........... Ellagic acid is usually made from red raspberries. This is the source of ellagic acid that has been tested as a cancer alternative. Ellagic acid comes in two concentrations. 1. 1% standardized ellagic acid extract. 2. 40% standardized ellagic acid extract. Ellagic Acid may be one the most potent ways to fight Cancer. Ellagic Acid, a phenolic compound, is a proven anti-carcinogen, anti-mutagen, and anti-cancer initiator! A major University is conducting a double blind study on a large group of 500 cervical cancer patients that has exciting preliminary results. Nine years of study have shown that a natural product called ellagic acid is causing G-arrest within 48 hours (inhibiting and stopping mitosis-cancer cell division), and apoptosis (normal cell death) within 72 hours, for breast, pancreas, esophageal, skin, colon and prostate cancer cells. Clinical tests also show that ellagic acid prevents the destruction of the p53 gene by cancer cells. Additional studies suggest that one of the mechanisms by which ellagic acid inhibits mutagenesis and carcinogenesis is by forming adducts with DNA, thus masking binding sites to be occupied by the mutagen or carcinogen. http://www.ellagic-research.org/ 'The power of love rathur than the 'love of power' brings peace to this humble abode right now.' peace unto ye Honor Seed
if you can clean out around them and then get them to trellis it will be easier to pick them when they are ripe. Cutting back branches isnt going to hurt them TRUST ME lol
Plus they taste great too. For me it was as much an economic decision as anything. Blackberries grow well and there's a very good market for them. But Red Raspberries are not well adapted to Alabama climatic conditions making them hard to grow and there's almost no market for them. I sort of hate to put things in money terms like that, but when you're doing the self-sustaining farm thing sometimes it's necessary. There's a lot of stuff that I wish I could grow, but I don't have the extra time to put in. Peace, poor_old_dad
