Arapaho blackberry bushes are a popular choice for blackberry growers due to their early ripening, upright, self-fruitful, and thornless nature. They are considered the earliest producing thornless blackberry, with clusters of pinkish-white, rose-like flowers giving way to large, small fruiting rows. To plant Arapaho blackberries, it is essential to choose the right variety, prepare the planting site, and care for the plant.
Sunlight needs are crucial for Arapaho blackberries, which require at least six to eight hours of direct sunlight daily to maximize fruit production. Thornless blackberry plants can produce up to 20 pounds of fruit per season. Plant them in well-drained, slightly acidic soil with a pH level ranging from 6.5 to 7 and should contain at least 2 humus or organic material. Plant thornless blackberry plants at a distance of 5 feet each for better airflow, sun exposure, and space to spread.
When planting, unpack and soak the blackberry for 3 to 6 hours just before planting. Cover roots from sunlight when planting and dig holes for proper root development. Plant Arapaho blackberry plants about 3-4 feet apart to allow room for proper root development. For best results, plant in a sheltered, sunny position, with full sun to partial shade, slightly acidic soil that drains well, and medium watering.
Arapaho blackberry bushes prefer full sun, partial sun/shade, acidic, loamy, moist, and rich soil. Furnish ample moisture during the growing period and cultivate frequently. After the first fruiting season, prune to the ground to allow room for new canes.
In summary, Arapaho blackberry bushes are a popular choice for blackberry growers due to their early ripening, upright, self-fruitful nature, and ability to produce large, small fruits. Proper care, planting location, and pruning techniques are essential for successful growth and fruit production.
📹 The Basics for Growing Erect Variety Blackberries:Prolific, Delicious, & Great for Containers
I highly recommend growing blackberries in your vegetable and flower gardens. I go over all the basics for getting them into your …
📹 How to Grow Thornless Blackberries
Did you know about Thornless Blackberries? Yes, its a thing! They’re huge,sweet, and easy to pick… no gloves required.
Put little flags on, or just keep visual track of smaller numbers of the canes that are fruiting, and you can prune them in late summer or even after harvest. They are already on their way to death and pruning early prevents the risks of over wintering any disease or fungus that they could contract or harbor. Looking great!
Thank you for the information! I just picked up thornless blackberry plants and hoping to get results like you have in your garden. I also have blueberry plants that are doing quite well and hoping my fig trees will start producing soon. Keep up the great job and I’m about to check out more of your articles.
Really enjoyed the 2 methods you grow your thornless blacberries! Will be coying your methods. I grow the Triple Crown’s. Did them on a pergola-style support, 5 foot high. We pulled the canes down and roped them to the cross pieces of the pergola, not cutting off the height. Then we tried cutting them at 6 foot, but the length still was too much. Have to move the plants (not sure how they’ll like that!) So now will be doing it your way, now I found you. Thank you.
Hi there – I bought a thornless blackberry late last year and can’t wait till next Spring (I’m in Australia). I plan to grow it over a decorative garden arch which leads from one part of the garden to another. I also have many other types of berries which I bought at the same time – marionberry, tayberry, sylvanberry, josterberry, loganberry, youngberry, raspberry and thornless raspberry. I have not had experience with berries before (not counting strawberries of which I have about 250 plants) and I am leaning towards just concentrating on the thornless varieties. I love your very informative articles – please keep them coming. 😍
I just put in my first thornless blackberries either Apache or triple crown and within the first year I had four blackberries each. A surprising start your article has me so excited about what’s going to happen in the future and how many berries I’m gonna have I have about eight blackberry bushes some thorns some nut.
Love your vids & what a great Blackberry spread! I planted a thornless Black Satin Black erry bush just to see what it will do & it is growing sooooo happily with lots of new vines so quickly. We harvested a few berries already & they are the best blackberries I’ve ever eaten! they are sooo sweet & flavorful! Thank you for the information you share. I find your articles to be great resources & appreciate that you get right to the point with no fluff. 😊
It’s interesting how you and James Prigrioni differ with regards to the laterals. You say to not let them put too much energy into the laterals and to trim them at 20-30cm, James on the other hand top the plant (like you) but let the laterals grow out because he says Blackberries fruit on the laterals. Would you mind, Stace, adding your two cents here? My new canes arrive on Friday and I need to get it right. Regards, JN
Just found your website! So glad I did. My blackberry, not a thornless variety, isn’t doing so hot, sadly Ive neglected it to the point of abuse but, it’s determined to thrive! It has very healthy shoots popping up about ten feet away from the original spot in the middle of a pathway. I want to get a thornless blackberry but was wondering if I should eradicate the plant I have now, so they don’t cross pollinate? Or is that not a problem I need to worry about. Keep it up man, good job. Renewed my interest with this article. Thanks.
Thanks for this article. Two questions, first: I have heard that you aren’t supposed to plant blackberries next to raspberries, fact or fiction? I’m just wondering if you have had any issues. I grow Joan J raspberries and am looking to put in a row of triple crown blackberries right next to them. Second: How is the flavor of triple crown? I tend to prefer a berry that is more sweet than sour, not really a fan of tart berries. Any other information you want to include about winter hardiness, your climate, and your usda zone would be appreciated. Thanks!
Superb article!! I just got answers to every question I’ve had over the last bunch of years growing thornless berries! We haven’t done everything right, but have still had yummy blackberry summers! ONE MORE QUESTION THO: towards the end of the “season”, I noticed some berries had little white worms in them. Sometimes, I just closed my eyes and ate them anyway, but if other people noticed, they wouldn’t eat them. Do I need to spray the plants, or just eat the berries quicker?!!
If you have a climate that sometimes has cooler, wet summers, (as here in the NL) make sure you cut open the plant so that the sun can reach in. (specially in the bulky trellis form). Otherwise a mould can ruin the fruit that is not exposed to the sun. Mine doesn’t propagate under the ground, but when the normal shoots touch the ground for a period, it gets roots and you can do it that way. 2 plants, 10-15kg annually, with once every 5 year a failed crop due to mould or very late frost. I use the same plastic wrapped wire 🙂 Main uses: pancakes and jam. The jam is made with high pectin sugar,(75% fruit over-all). Add other kinds of fruit like loganberry,black/red currant for variation, specially 10-30% black currant is nice.
Hi! Brand new gardener here and I’d love to start growing blackberries and your article has amazing info so thank you! I’m in zone 10 and would need to grow them in a container pot about 3ft by 3ft. Do you have any recommendations on how many plants I should put in it and also how tall the pot should be? Thanks for any help!!
Thanks for the information! My young twins asked for a blackberry and boysenberry plants while at the garden center, so learning the best way to grow them! 1. Do you trim some of the laterals on the trellis? 2. I’m assuming the last year’s fruiting wood is also trimmed on the trellis. Is that correct? 3. Would boysenberries be treated like the blackberries? Thanks so much!
Hi Stacey. I just bought 4 blackberry root bulbs at home depot. They are about 3 lb in size. They have a single shoot about a foot lon. I live in Iowa. Poor soil in my yard so i mxed sand with good garden soil. The area is about 15 sq. ft and is well drained. Questions. should I fertilize? How often do I water? Is earthworm casting a good fertilizer? Thank you
Planted a Blackberry three years ago. Live just north of San Antonio, Tx…It has yet to go dormant thru the winter, even this last winter when it hit 6°F for a week with 7″ of snow on the ground. Didn’t loose any leaves, thought for sure it would die from that extreme cold snap. How do I trim or cut it back ?
Great article! Im glad I found this because yesterday I made my own trellis from an old portable shirt/wardrobe hanger frame, with thick cording tied on & weaved in. It’s about 3.5 ft wide & 5 ft tall. I took the wheels off & will hammer it into the ground. Think it’ll be enough for a few years and/or will I need to expand my trellis at some point? TIA
Greetings from Mosaic Community Garden of Chula Vista, CA. Thank you for the “Short n Sweet” – GO TO knowledge to get our garden to a great start. Were scheduled to place 4 types of Thornless, BB – Triple Crown, Quachita, Arapaho & Apache within the garden. Question ? – what nutrients are need to include and any specific planting techniques besides the ones you mentioned in the article, that you would care to share ? (A BRAND NEW SUBSCRIBER FROM SAN DIEGO) “BRAVO ZULU”
I have thornless blackberries that was given to me so I don’t know what variety they are maybe blackberries don’t have varieties like raspberries, but my blackberries don’t have much flavor. What can I do to give them more flavor they get plenty of water plenty of sunshine I don’t know what else to do. The blackberries growing along side of the road have more flavor than mine do. By the way great article.
I have a question. If my blackberry vines have grown to about seven or eight feet by mid-July, should I cut them down to half their size to create a tower? I bought a home where the previous owner planted several blackberry bushes. So I am very new to this crop. I also put bird netting over the top of these several bushes in late May, and now I have a few vines that have burst through the netting that are very long (the seven or eight feet vines). I did the netting because there is a whole lot of birds in my area and I was afraid they would eat all the berries before they ripened. I am now starting to have fruit so I am about to remove the netting, but I will need to be careful to not destroy the vines that have broken through the netting. When I bought the home, the blackberry bushes had been cropped down to about one and a half feet in height. Is that normal and if so, will it affect how big a production I get from year to year? Thanks.
Thank you. My husband brought one plant home. One of the leaves was folded, with the leaf edges touching. It had tightly – woven spider web looking stuff at the edges. I didn’t open it, in case there was a bug inside. Just plucked it off and ran to flush it in the toilet. That was in June. It was ok all summer, but now that September is here, I saw another one. This didn’t look as scary, so I looked at it. The white webby substance appeared to act like a glue, holding the leave edge together. There was nothing inside. I just plucked it off. I’m obviously new to this, and wonder if anyone could advise me as to whether I should destroy the plant, or just leave it? It is about 2’ high, but spindly, with skinny branches going every which way. I started to wind the branches into a chain link fence, but now wonder if I should lightly attach it to stakes, and maybe trim the branch tops next Spring, so it will resemble more a thick bush? Also, should I cover it with straw for an east coast Canada winter? Thank you.
Hello! Thank you for this article, its very informative and helpful. We have 2 thornless blackberries that we planted 2 years ago. The first 2 years we got big plump blackberries. This year they are at least half the size smaller. Is there anything we can do to to correct this? Also. They grow a random upright stalk that has no blooms or berries, it dosen’t look much like the rest of the Bush but it is . My husband keeps cutting it off. Can you explain what its purpose is and if removing it from the Bush is a good thing or bad thing?
Hi. I live in zone 4b in Michigan, and I’ve been wanting to get my hands on some thornless blackberry plants this year. I just bought this house a year or so ago and now am getting into the gardening phase now that I’m comfortable. My yard doesn’t get a lot of sun, trees on 3 sides. Dead center of the lawns my best bet for sun. Do these guys do okay in shade?
Hi 🙂 I was wondering if the cutting back applies to new plants? I just planted baby thornless blackberry plants last year. They didn’t fruit anything. So I’m thinking no? But I wasn’t sure. I checked on them this week & they did grow a foot or two over the last yr & I’m hoping they’ll fruit this year 🙂
My “thorn-less” blackberry plants are great about propagating themselves and provide a decent crop of medium-sized sweet berries for around two and a half weeks annually – but really suck at being thornless, and will give you an ouch dammit if you’re not paying close attention when trimming or picking. I don’t recall the name on the tag at the nursery, but either they reverted back to the ancestral DNA or the originator of the plant was overly optimistic, had leather skin, wasn’t quite honest or..
Wow you talk pretty fast. I bought a couple of these off of BST on facebook from a guy in the country. I gave one to my sister and kept one. I put it in a 5 gln bucket and it’s doing good. I am wondering when to cut off the “old wood.” There is only one stalk of it, and it is not “dead.” All of the leaves and new growth are on the new part. I am excited about having my own thornless blackberries. The man told me it will probably be next season before I get berries. I planted mine in March …
I have a new home and I’m dying to grow these. Can I put two plants 4 to 6 feet apart and trellis them along my fence to sort of meet in the middle? (I discovered there’s more cement pour where I’d planned to plant a few close to my fence line but want them along the fence in the back). I’m brand new to this but we had wild blackberries at our old home that we lost in the Campfire of 2018 in nor cal and my kiddo misses picking them every summer so I want to surprise him.
Husband harvested the blackberries. He rinsed, packaged into ziploc bags and placed into the refrigerator. Next day when I pulled out a baggie of those blackberries I seen tiny little worms crawling l in and out of the blackberries. Eeeew! That means I ate some of those tiny worms when eating blackberries straight off the plant. Yuk! Do you have any suggestions for the preventing or ridding of these worms ?
I got a thornless blackberry plant from a friend 2 years ago. I noticed that this year I am getting shoots on the laterals and a strong shoot coming up from the ground. I understand how to prune shoots from the ground for next year but should I cut the laterals back this year because they have all the buds on them?They look like your big bush laterals. I have tied them to the bottom of a fence and planned to let the vertical shoots off them go up the fence. Is this ok?
Thank you for the article. For the shorter blackberries, you tied one vine on the wire and the other you clipped the tip. Why? This is my first year and i have three long vines, 2 of which are over 8ft. One of them has 2 vines coming off. They are not going to fruit this year since i just planted. Do i just cut them all down to the length i want then or better to just run them down a line to get more fruit?
I also have the same triple crown blackberries, they are in the same raised bed with the raspberries. I got them in April 2020, so far they have only produced 5 flowers. And maybe 2 blackberries. Every year they grow huge, the canes fall to the ground and multiply, the raspberries produce all year long, but the blackberries nothing. What am I doing wrong? I am in 6B, they are in a sunny area. They go dormid in the winter. I need help!