Growing Blackberries is easy if you plant them in the right conditions and give them the support they need. Now there are thornless varieties which makes growing them much less painful. Download and save my graphic for 10 Tips For Growing Blackberries.
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Blackberries are a low-maintenance, easy-to-grow fruit that have many health benefits. Now new thornless varieties are available to make picking easier.
10 Tips For Growing Blackberries:
#1. Plant where they will get at least 10 hours of direct sunlight.
#2. Construct trellises for trailing varieties before planting.
#3. Space upright varieties at 3-foot intervals in rows 8 feet apart. Set trailing varieties 5 to 8 feet apart in rows 6 to 10 feet apart. Set plants 1 inch deeper than they were grown in the nursery.
#4. Cut the plants back to about six inches after you plant them.
#5. Fertilize the ground as soon in the spring as you possibly can.
#6. Make sure the growing blackberry plants recieve about one inch of water a week.
#7. You need to make sure you do not plant the bushes where peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, potatoes or strawberries are growing, or have grown in the past three years or so.
#8. Your soil should have a pH between 5.6 to 6.2..
#9. After you see ripened blackberries, you want to pick them every three to six days.
#10. To prevent chilling injury in the winter, lay the canes of trailing types on the ground in winter and cover with a thick layer of mulch.
Check out my posts about how to set up Blackberry Planting and setting up Blackberry poles for support (here) and (here).
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Other 10 Garden Tips Infographic:
10 Tips For Growing Green Beans
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Oat Berry Smoothie Bowl {gluten free}
Blackberry Chocolate Pistachio Smoothie
August Gardening
Great tips! Thanks for posting them. Do you have any tips for pruning them in fall/winter?
Hi Trish,
I do not prune in the fall, but early in the spring and late summer.
Do not prune first year.
Second year canes should be pruned by cutting off the tips of the blackberry canes. This will force the blackberry canes to branch out, which will create more wood for blackberry fruit to grow. The rule of thumb is to cut them to 24″tall.
After your last blackberry has been picked, long before the first frost you want to do your second trim. Blackberries only produce fruit on canes that are two years old, so once a cane has produced berries, it will never produce berries again. Cutting these spent canes off the blackberry bush will encourage the plant to produce more fist year canes, which in turn, will mean more fruit producing canes next year.
Don’t compost your canes because of disease that may be present.
Best of luck.
Amy
This is our first year to grow blackberry do I pick them just turning or wait. ?
Blackberries should be picked when ripe.