Blackberries are best planted in early spring when they are dormant, and they require a thick layer of mulch to conserve moisture and suffocate weeds. If planting is not possible, keep new arrivals cool and roots moist. Blackberries are relatively easy to grow and produce a bountiful harvest. To grow blackberries, learn how to plant an appropriate variety, train the shoots, and care for your plants throughout the growing season.
Blackberries can grow in various types of soil, but they thrive in slightly acidic, well-drained, organically rich soil. They do best in loam or sandy loam soil. In the spring, treat your blackberry plant to a generous helping of fertiliser and a layer of mulch or well-rotted manure every winter. Water new plants regularly for their first growing season, and well-established plants should not need extra watering.
Planting blackberry plants in containers and in-ground is simple, as well as fertilizing, pruning, watering, and winter care recommendations. Sites with full sun are best for productive blackberry bushes, but some afternoon shade is tolerated, especially in areas with hot summers. Once the bushes are established, there is very little blackberry plant care needed. Water regularly, providing an inch (2.5 cm.) of water per week.
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I was farmer from young age. Growing up in Nepal I had no choice but picked up traditional farming techniques. Some of them proved to be wrong sadly. Here I am 10 years later trying to grow hot chillies for myself in this pandemic. Your articles have been inspirational for me. Hoping to go through all of your articles to expand my gardening skills.
They don’t always grow from the crown. The can (and do) spread up to 5 feet or so from where they are planted, but the variety effect this greatly. Also, the are 2 main types, floricanes and primocanes. He is explaining how to tend to floricanes which fruit on 2nd season growth earlier on the spring or summer. Primocanes can be treated different because they will fruit on the new growth of the plant, in the fall (aka fall bearing). Triple crown are floricanes, so I’d you chop the wrong ones the won’t be fruit until next year, but primeark freedom are primocanes and you can cut them top the ground each year and you bwt a hefty fall crop.
If you get trailing varieties, they will spread a fair distance..I’ve had canes pop up 6-8 feet away from where I planted the crowns. If you get erect varieties, the tend to stay closer to the crown. Also, watch the hardiness zone. I am in zone 5b, and some years they do well, other years they mostly die from the cold and only survive close to the ground.
Blackberries take me back to when I was a little boy following my grandfather around through the briars picking wild blackberries in Pa. I’m finally going to plant them in my backyard this spring. I’m going with Prime Ark Freedom and Ponca. I’m hoping to make some good memories with my grandchildren, minus the thorns and scratches. 😊 Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us.
Thank you for the article!! I have no experience in gardening and found a blackberry plant at Harris Teeter. I live in an apartment and don’t have a ground to transfer my plant from Its pot (i just have a patio). Now the branches are growing suuuper tall and idk what to do with this plant 😭. Any suggestions on how I can take care of it if I can’t pop it into the ground?
Just watched this article, hoping there might be a tip that I’ve overlooked with my thornless blackberries. Ive had 3 Triple Crown and 4 Baby Cakes in zone 8 (Pacific NW) and this is year 2 for them. Blackberries grow wildly rampant here – never in short supply and I love them – this is the perfect climate for berries. Anyway, I gave mine a light feed early Spring and keep them mulched, have only watered once or twice this year as we’ve had excessive rainfall here since late Summer last year. I guess production is good – berries are just ripening now. I sampled one the other day and just like last year I found the taste very offputting. The berries are nice and big but I note there are tiny areas on the fruits that are discolored (tan) and the taste is NOT what I’ve anticipated. Normally blackberries have that wonderful bright flavor and I would say mine, especially the triple crowns are musty in flavor. Sorry for the long ramble – I’m just so darned frustrated with them and looking for insight. Mind you my raspberries and blueberries have been off the charts this year; I guess that’s the good news. Thanks for any ideas you might have. I should say mine are in nice raised beds and receive full sun. They are trellised much like yours. The plants look gloriously healthy.
Thank you for the article. I am in CT and bought 3 apache thornless black berries this sprint- summer. Well…it gets under zero F here. I just now learned from seller to protect from frost. Do I just bring then in the garage every year? I have to pay due to the weight. OR…can they survive a CT winter on my 2nd story deck? One is about 3 feet tall.
I ordered 3 blackberries varieties and live in zone 9a houston texas. I came across your website when research to grow blackberries. Love your article and all blackberries canes you have. May I ask? Are blackberries have any diseases and how do you treated them. Thank you so much for all your help and time. Thank you so much 🙏
Thank you for the blackberry article. I just picked about a half gallon this morning. They have been in the same area for many years. Unfortunately, I was unable to maintain them last year, so I’m trying to catch up. They were covered in an invasive vine, which I’ll be working on for a many more days to clear them out. Now I’ve seen there is a white fungus like substance on several of the canes. Do you think Hydrogen peroxide solution will help this?
I have a few thornless blackberries, they grow really well, But they aren’t producing hardly any fruit. there are blooms, but that is about as far as they go. I have fertilized with 10-10-10 which i was told is good. I have some thornless Raspberries as well, and they are doing better, but not anything like in your article.. Any tips to increase fruits ? These plants are over 3 yrs old now.. What to do ?
Question…do the blackberries grow larger and larger from their green to black stage? I have HUGE plants in very large containers (30-gal each) and a bazillion berries growing. Mine berries seem smallish. Most are still green or starting to turn reddish. This is a 2nd-year plant, so it’s the first time my plants have produced fruit. Last year, they were just beautiful leaves.
Hi Gary, my blackberry is just one long cane. I got them last year and planted them in the ground but instead of becoming a bush they became a single cane. I live in Southern California and I don’t think they like the heat much. How do I get that single cane to become a bush? Thanks in advance for any advice
LOL, I jumped every time you put your hand in there. I can’t handle mine at all, there are thousands of THORNS on every twig! These wild berries are VERY small, and not very sweet. Am thinking, I’ll give them 2 years. After pruning, soil testing, amending, watering, trellising, fertilizing, etc… if they don’t do better in 2 years, they are all coming out!
years ago i wanted so bad to grow black berries,well popped up on my fence,the ones with thorns and spread like wild fire,got many blackberries for a few yrs,then i decided to plant some extra big thorn less type,omg,same thing,took off in all directions. well after removing dozens of irritating sticker from my skin,”i hate em” painful and hard to get out without minor surgery lol,i decided to get rid of hundreds of wild plants and branches ! . no more stickers”thorns” except the wild ones keep coming back . take some advice people plant the wild ones where you dont want them to completely take over an area ! .they do also do very well in large planters,but i didnt have much luck with the thorn-less variety doing well in planters,they love the ground better ! . one more thing everyone,watch out for the mint family plants,they are even more invasive ! those for sure put in large planters !
If you enjoyed this article, please “Like” and share it to help increase its reach! Thanks for perusal 😊TIMESTAMPS here: 0:00 Intro To Growing Blackberry Plants 1:10 Step #1: Blackberry Type Selection 3:27 Blackberry Primocanes VS Floricanes 6:44 My Favorite Blackberry Variety 11:04 Blackberry Taste Test 11:35 Step #2: Selecting A Planting Location 14:11 Step #3: Fertilizing Blackberries 15:52 Step #4: Removing Weeds 17:05 Step #5: Compost And Mulch 20:35 Summer Pruning Blackberries 23:21 Adventures With Dale
I grow apache, aparaho, navajo, and thripple crown thornless varieties. All are delicious and they behave a little differently and flower a little offset so I have a longer harvest season. Only remove a cane after its obviously died. I have 2 of each of those kinds and I’m on year 4 of harvest (year 5 of planting). I got GALLONS last year. I’m seeing twice the amount of flowers this year. My original plan was to grow these 4 to pick my favorite, but now I’ve decided to keep multiples of all of them.
Hi MG! I bought some prime ark freedom blackberry plants from your Amazon link this spring. When I received them I was worried because they were tiny twigs with one or two microscopic leaves. I thought no way these are gonna survive. Three to four months later they are over six feet tall! I’m so impressed. Thank you so much for the recommendation ❤
Thank you for this very thorough article on how to grow Blackberries. I purchased a couple of “patio” blackberries last year, and planted them in ground, because I wasn’t sure they would overwinter without doing that. They have done great but I needed more info and didn’t want to spend hours hunting down legitimate and detailed info on how to grow blackberries. You have given such a great presentation imo that is simple and to the point, and have taken the “mystery” out of how to grow them successfully. This is exactly what I was looking for. I am definitely subbing.
I LOVE the Prime-Ark Freedom, I mail-ordered a few several years ago. I did a container experiment, and put one in a 5 gallon pot, I followed Nourse nursery instructions for growing as a ‘tower’ by making a cage of 4×4 concrete reinforcing wire around he 5-gallon pot. The instruction was to prune each cane when it grew to 18 inches or so, and let the side branches come out and fruit. This variety is so delicious, and the berries are big! I’m growing in a dry climate on a hill in California zone 9. I can’t say enough about this variety.
Just wanted to make a small correction. ON your Prime ARk Freedom blackberries, the berries you are picking here in May are actually coming off of last years growth so it is actually floricane berries. The Primocane berries won’t deliver until much later in the summer. That was the tall new growth you mentioned. Two crops per season is the incredible thing about Prime ARk Freedom. Never cut your primocanes after the first year you will miss out on early crop next year.
I noticed my raspberries love the shade and im in Massachusetts which isn’t all that hot. I find raspberries under my porch with almost no sun. Raspberries are an amazing plant. Grows just about anywhere. Birds ate mine one year and now as i walk my dog im finding raspberry plants growing in the cracks of the sidewalks way down my street. I was stunned.
I have Prime Ark Freedoms and other varieties and I find that the Prime Ark Freedoms are big berries and prolific, but for me, they tend to be on the tart side(zone 9b). I also have Ponca’s which are smaller but sweeter. I also planted Triple Crown and Sweetie Pie but will have to wait for next year to compare. Here in zone 9 temps during summer are in the range of 90 degrees to 103 degrees so I tend to put a cover cloth on them to prevent burning. Great article on explaining everything about blackberries.
Bought and planted a thornless primacane for my mom like 30 years ago and it was the most vigorous growing and heavy yielding blackberry plant I have ever seen. Growing up in Northeast NY in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains we used to forage wild blackberries among many other wild edibles. Not sure what variety that thornless was but it was leaps and bounds better than what I foraged in the woods as a kid lol
I just pulled up some blackberry or raspberry thorned canes out of my flower bed along the house in my front yard 🙁 Google says they’re blackberry. They were 2-3′ tall and growing. Maybe I should have just topped them but figured I couldn’t leave them there. I did get some of the roots to come up with them so I transplanted two of them in soil and put one in a bottle with water to see what they do. I’m guessing a bird ate some of the store bought berry’s I threw out and that’s how they started there. I tried starting raspberry’s this year from some root cuttings but haven’t been successful yet. I was successful at growing strawberry’s from seed from a store bought berry, maybe I can grow blackberry’s the same way 🙂 Great article. I enjoyed perusal it.
My neighbor just gave me a bunch of plants for free Thorny ones …. the ones she gave me I planted two years ago they are loaded with berries this year, now I have the new plants she just gave me lol hers are wild ones she found growing on her cherry farm …..the flavor is awesome …….i don’t find the thornless ones that flavorful compared to the thorny wild ones, just my opinion …..❤❤
I have been growing blackberries for a long time, Prime ark freedom and Osage both from Dr Clark out of Arkansas if am not mistaken are in my opinion the best there are and i have grown many many varieties, Great article as usual. Btw you can get two crops out of PAF, depending on how you prune them. Thank you
I appreciate your advice. I will say that as a boy (long ago a man) who grew up in the PNW as the grandson of berry farmers, that every thorned variety produces berries of a superior flavor to every thornless. I very much miss picking from the ever-abundant thorned bushes that were spread by birds. Never will there be a more flaverfull jam or pie from any thornless variety. The larger the berry, the weaker the flavor per pound. A superior blackberry requires no addition of acid (lemon or otherwise) for any recipe.
I planted three blackberry bushes in 2022 not knowing the first thing about growing them (one was a birthday gift, and I decided it needed two friends, big box store offerings). Currently in a raised bed with inappropriately placed bee balm. I’m excited to know how to rehab the bed now (thanks!) and I want to set them up for success next year. Do you have off-season pruning tips/videos for these bushes?
Growing lots of Arkansas varieties, Arapaho, Ouachita, Caddo, Ponca, Osage, Prime Ark Freedom, Prime Ark 45,Natchez. Then I got my Triple Crown, Von, Chester, Sweetie Pie, all in the same area. My little boys will go outside and devour all the Blackberries, Raspberries and Blueberries from the plants, gotta keep growing my food forest.
Great tips! I’ve grown blackberries for about 25 years near the Texas Gulf Coast. IMO, the thorned varieties used to have superior fruit. I don’t believe that is still the case though. A few things that I learned over the years, the more branches that your plant has, the more fruit you’ll get. Tipping the long canes makes them branch and fruit more. Three to four foot long canes are long enough. Thornless plants are much easier to net than thorned ones. A perfectly black, shiny berry, while beautiful, is not ripe. For best flavor, wait and pick your berries once they become dull. Where disease pressure is high, you might not want to mulch the cuttings in place. If you DO mulch on top of your cuttings, you may have some cuttings root, which can be good or bad. P.S. My Apache and Arapaho plants have been producing berries for about a week on the border of 8b/9a.
I lived in Oregon for 10 years and berries grow wild everywhere. I used to to go out to Sauvie Island near Portland and there was a field that a farmer had and he just huge Blackberry brambles as a wind break barrier around his field so we always stopped and picked berries. The farmer didn’t cut or cultivate the berries in anyway so it was tough picking. But free !
Navajo preform great for me in MA. Beautiful eye candy white flowers that turn into delicious monster berries. I had a huge harvest last year and ended up breaking new cane that grew over 8ft trying to shape it, it broke at the base. So sadly not going to have huge harvest this year. Hopefully few of the last year wood gives me something. Great article! ETA: I have Navajo planted on the side of my house, not full sun. And it still performs great. Eastern Mass! Regarding nutrients, all I do is add compost spring, and every other week top dress with compost. That’s it.
I have a question. Are the Navajo blackberries very sweet and not have the bitter blackberry taste? I am 71 and grew up eating Dewberries which are blackberries with that are much sweeter than your regular bitter tasting blackberries. They were very puffy very sweet and I can’t remember whether they had thorns or not is the same type of blackberry as a Dewberry? I am in North Carolina in the Piedmont. We purchase from a local grower that sells Navajo and they are very sweet. Did you plant from plants or from seeds and where can we get the seeds or plants from? I did not look in your description. Very good article thank you for putting this out. I do follow you because you are in my growing zone and have great content.
I’ve never considered growing blackberries til now. Thanks for simplifying it all. I’m going to try growing a primocane type if I can find one. I think I’ll have to shop online. Do you know a good source? Nothing available near me. Would it be a bare root at this point? Up til now I’m growing strawberries and blueberries.Thanks again.🌱 From CA 🏖️take care
Hello thank you for the awesome article! I appreciate your hard work and help. I have a question though. I noticed that when you put the fertilizer down you didn’t rake the old mulch out of the way before composting fertilizing and remulching. Is there a reason for having old mulch under the compost and new mulch? Does this help the old mulch break down faster or something? I have also heard that if you get mulch into the soil it requires nitrogen to break down, so it can pull nitrogen from your plants. What do you think about these things,?
I live in zone 6 in eastern PA. I have one area that gets full sun. If I plant a trailing thornless blackberry, can I keep it short and still get decent fruiting with appropriate pruning? It was a gift and therefor I don’t want to get rid of it. I notice you have your plants all about three feet apart. Can I include the regular thornless one in a row like yours among the prime ark freedoms that I’m going to order.
You’re the gardener I refer to when and what I plant in my garden. I had blackberries, which I battled to keep in control of, when I was living in CA; and I now live in northern Illinois. I want to grow blackberries, but don’t want them to spread – can they be grown in pots?… if the pot is big enough? Thank you!!!
Recently planted a variety of vegetables and fruits, golden raspberries being one of them. I’ve been perusal your articles for a while but had one question. When working with compost that contains manure, universities at Idaho, Wisconsin, and my local Penn State advise waiting to harvest after manure is applied anywhere from 30-90 days. This article confuses me on that. Any suggestions or advice?
I have many varieties now, but i purchased some Prime Rk freedom from yours and a few others recommendations, at the end of the fall last year, a radom deer came and ate all the brambles from it down to the roots… Didnt touch any of the other plants just the prime ark freedoms…. Luckily its starting to come back, but i dont think ill see any fruit from it till next year
Literally just ate my first ripe blackberry for the year😊 Edit: These are flora berries too, in Nashville, dont know what variety it is but its thornless, semi erect and its one absolutely gaint plant. Im going to have buckets of berries in a couple weeks. I use 5-1-1 fish fertilizer early in the year then switch to 0-10-10 Fish Fertilizer when flowering starts. Seems to work so far
Thanks for the article! Honestly it’s been hard to find good articles on how to grow blackberries. I live in Central FL zone 9b/10a (sort of on the border). I have 3 thornless Arapaho blackberry plants, so they grow on their 2nd year canes. I have them in large grow bags (I rent) and had an issue with them not producing and struggling with some disease, but I started pruning the canes to be about 4-5ft to stimulate more lateral growth, and supposedly the plant can have a hard time supporting really tall canes and fruiting when it doesn’t have all the nutrients of being planted in ground. So I pruned them to be about 4-5 feet (way more manageable), they almost immediately shot lateral growth and started fruiting lol. Same with my boysenberries! This is the first time mine are actually growing berries, they had to be cut back to soil level twice due to disease, but one day they just came back stronger, gave them more sun and better conditions, so 2 years later I actually get a few berries lol, almost done ripening!
In the past I had a variety that grew canes 10-12 feet and got crazy out of control. I removed those a number of years ago. Last year I planted 3 of the Baby Cakes Blackberry Bushes. They stay smaller and compact. They were very tiny plants but this year they have leafed out so well amd have numerous flowers
Wonderful article! Thank you so much! I would love to see more content on these, even some shorts about how you prune it throughout the year and at the end of the year. Most pruning articles focus on the fluoricane bearing, which is understandable but unhelpful. I have Prime Ark Freedom and Travelers in a setup directly copied from you. I will update my spring chore list! FYI, I have discovered that blackberries really don’t like containers. I had one plant in a 30 gallon grow bag and it was unhappy. I transferred it to the bed and it immediately took off! Seriously, thank you for posting this!
Do the prime ark freedom send out a ton of runners? A lot of people insist that blackberries don’t send out as many runners as raspberries, but my garden is being overrun with blackberry runners (even more runners than my raspberries are sending out). I can’t remember the varieties i planted (I’ll have to check my garden notes) but they’re going crazy.
I second the question: How do you keep underground runners from getting totally out of bounds. I’ve had Prime Ark Freedoms for years and they will send some very, very long runners underground only to come up several feet away. And let me tell you it’s a chore digging down a foot or more to excavate them! I have this same problem with my raspberry beds.
That is a very tiny, but tidy blackberry bed! Mine is a little bigger, 8×4 ft. All the Indian named blackberries as well as the PrimeArk Freedom were developed by the University of Arkansas. I grow Natchez and Apache, based on recommendations from U of A for central Arkansas. They have no problem with the Arkansas summer (they are native here) even at 100+F. Acidic soil is key, as this is also typical of Arkansas. The plants take several years to get entirely established although they do fruit on year two. At year 6, they are robust, not just filling up my small bed but sending up canes as far as 100 ft from the garden.
Agh. Wish I’d seen this article a couple of years earlier:( I’ve got 2 year old floricane fruiting variety and I need some guidance on how to prune them. I know I can cut the floricanes down to the ground after they fruit but should I be doing something to the primocanes? They get so tall and unwieldy in the summer (despite being the erect type). Zone 8a, Georgia. Thank you!
I got obsessed with blackberries and raspberries last year, and have since collected 42 varieties in my small backyard. For me, I’ve found that the flavor of PAF is just… not good (weak flavor, and bitter soapy aftertaste) protip: in the future, you should pinch the tip off your PAF primocanes when they hit about 4 feet tall to stop them from growing any taller – they will then start sending out laterals instead
Someone gave me a cutting from a Thornless blackberry 12 years ago and that thing spread like crazy.every time I find a new sprout I doig it up and plant in pots and give away or just start a new plant in a pot to contain it.i also start new plants from the prunes.but my berries are big as your thumb
I understood that the Freedom floricanes fruited in Spring or early Summer and the primocanes fruited in late Summer or early Fall. An expert told me to tip when canes are 3 to 4′ tall starting in Spring so they’ll produces laterals off the primocanes and fruit late summer. Are you sure those Feedom fruit aren’t on the floricanes aka last years primocanes? If you’re dead sure you’re getting Spring fruit off of primocanes, that’s good news I figure.
Hello. I would like to ask you a question about citrus satsuma owari that you grow. Can I grow it in ground in north part of Silesia Poland becouse idk where to find out about it and I dont really want to risk it’s life by trying to do it without proper knowledge. If you cant tell me that i understand why. 😊🍊🍊🍊😃
I went with thornless because my toddler likes to pick them. I don’t think there is any difference in the taste. I think it goes with the thought process of they don’t make’em like they use to when I was a kid 🙂 but working smarter not harder is never a bad thing in my book! I love your setup it’s so nice, cheers.
Hey, just in the off chance you find this comment, I’m not very far from you and for some reason my rabbit eye blueberries are over a month ahead this year and I’m trying to figure out why. Have you noticed this with yours? My bushes are over 30 years old and to my knowledge haven’t been pruned in at least 15 years so they’re absolutely enormous. (about the size of a 2 door car) They’re usually very consistent with their timing and normally during this time they’re usually smaller than a half a grain of rice but they’re bigger than a garden pea. I was very shocked when I headed out to fertilize them a week ago. I ended up using the fertilizer I mixed up for my tomatoes and instead mixed up some bloom feed for them.
Question off topic, my sister wanted a butterfly bush for Mother’s Day. I tried local nurseries to get the one she wanted, I had to order it online ( three colored flowers). It showed up on the 11th. Every thing I have read on them says be careful of overwatering and over fertilizing. The plant that showed up is not one I would have brought home,it was extremely dry and yellowing leafs. I planted it with a little blood meal and bone meal. I watered a little with a water soluble fertilizer. Feeling the water soluble fertilizer would help with the yellowing and start things on the road to recovery while the other things would help the roots establish and provide some nutrients slowly. Rain predicted every day this week to some degree. Any thoughts? It’s her Mother’s Day present so want to do everything I can to get it established ( it was in a pot of soil with the bush bent double down to the pot in a cardboard box).HELP please!!!!!
Unfortunately Michigan winters are more than the Prime Ark blackberry varieties can handle. If I had my way, there would be a blackberry variety that is thorny enough to slow down the critters, fruits on primocanes & floricanes, is cold hardy down to Zone 4, & produces berries with superior flavor. For now I’ll settle for the Chester & Black Satin thornless blackberry varieties that were on sale at Home Depot last month LOL There are cold hardy black raspberry varieties now that fruit on the primocanes & floricanes, but I’ve resisted the urge to acquire them since we already have an established Allen black raspberry patch.
Good article! I grow alot of berries in zone 6. The 10+ varieties of raspberries i grow are sweet like candy and are vastly superior to any blackberry I’ve ever eaten in my opinion. As for blackberries, i have 4 thorny varieties that all taste significantly better and sweeter than the black satin thornless blackberry I have. I’m trying three new varieties of thornless blackberry this year. Ponca, black gem and prime ark freedom. All were bred from the university of Arkansas. The first 2 are supposed to be some of the sweetest blackberries available. I will find out in a year. Until then i definitely think the thorny blackberries are superior and they are also deer resistant. I’m not sure if Joan J red raspberries will grow in your zone but if so i highly recommended them for you to grow. Completely thornless and high yielding. I have a question, I recognized the coolaro Dale is laying on, but not that mattress pad that seems to fit it perfectly, can you please tell me where you got that from? I think my dog would love it.
What type and name of black berries and berries in general can you grow in 80+ mph constant winds with often very heavy downpours and how should they be planted and protected from the elements and animals? I would be so thankful for any information if anyone may please share I’m sure it would help me out and many people too. I believe I am in zone 7. Also the weather has been bipolar in Westchester NY and we get really bad cold snaps and even in May we are still having some really cold chilly days it goes anywhere from mid 70s to about in the 40s so far in May. The winters have been pretty bad as well and the sun during the summer Is much more intense here than the rest of NY. Many areas in Westchester have their own microclimates and you can feel the difference in each town you go. What do you think would be best for the previosly mentioned microclimate and for maybe growing in a really large pot or a 1 and a half foot tall raised garden bed?
I germinated my own blackberry seeds they’re in a plant potter I’ve kept the plant going for three years. No berries. I want to plant these plants in to the ground. I use miracle grow every week mine have thorns. What am I doing wrong I’ve had a prima cane I cut back but I’m so bummed I love blackberries this is why I did what did the store is too expensive. Help me?
Me living in the PNW where blackberry is a curse word, some of the most nefarious weeds to keep from swallowing up your entire house. 🫣 They are delicious though and I love going to the river to pick the wild ones. Pretty sure all of the blackberries here are Himalayan. I make jam, jellies, and glazes with them. 🙂
PAF fruits on both floricanes and primocanes, floricanes in the spring, primocanes in late summer or fall. Those berries you are picking are floricane berries. If you entirely remove the primocanes in the winter, the following spring there will be no floricanes and the new primocanes will come up as vegetative growth and fruit later in the year, not in spring. Generally, a pure primocane PAF plant will fruit earlier than a PAF plant that also ripened a spring floricane crop. Also, I’ve heard that you can get an even earlier and bigger spring floricane harvest by pruning the primocanes in the fall so they don’t flower and set fruit. Regardless, a primocane only PAF will not set fruit in the spring.
I grew up in the Seattle area where blackberries grow wild ALL OVER THE PLACE. Great when you’re a kids and your mom gives you a bucket to get you out of her hair for a bit. Folks hire goat herds to ‘mow’ the blackberries down because they are nearly impossible to rid one’s yard of them. I am concerned with these garden variety blackberries possibly becoming a nuisance. I noticed a cane between the plants that you fertilized. Is that a random cane? Do they spread?
I’ve found that the Prime Arc Freedom blackberries you HAVE to give them 1-2 days after you think they are ripe until you pick them. That takes the taste from still fairly tart to wonderful. I have a couple of other floricane varieties which, like your other plant are not showing much early spring production. I have one thorn variety, Black Magic, and it has more berries than the PA Freedom, but I’ve harvested all the Freedom berries and the thorn berries are only just ripening. (Zone 9A, Texas). All are ‘new plants last year. I planted a selection of several varieties to see what did the best. I’ve added some additional Arkansas plants this year. All are currently in pots.
It killed me to see you chop 60% of that prima-ark down. If you would have snipped the top off as soon as it reached the desired height, it would send out mulitple flowering shoots instead of just that one tall one. Every flowering shoot makes blackberries. You snip, wait for about 2-4 more shoot to come out & grow to 2-3 foot, and then snip all of those. In the time it took to grow that tall, you could have had 8-12 flowering shoots instead of just cutting it back down & “using for mulch.”
Aren’t the fruits you’re showing on the PAF floricane berries from last year’s canes? Indeed you could prune all primocanes after fruiting on the primocanes but that’s not what you have done here. There is no way that your primocanes have enough time to grow, flower and ripen fruit before the floricane variety which are basically ready to flower early in spring. Also primocane berries would be only on the tips of the primocanes (of course multiple tips if you do tipping) but the example berries you’re showing on the PAF are growing from lateral buds, which supports the idea that they are actually floricane berries. I’m not an expert, but I’m confused on why you claim that this is an advantage of the primocane varieties. Maybe the advantage here is that the floricane crop on the PAF is earlier than the floricane crop on the Navajo Thornless and that works better for you given your disease and storm pressure later in the year. Having said that your plants are doing awesome!, could you explain why you don’t do tipping as is recommended on varieties like PAF to increase the primocane crop and to keep them shorter/bushier? Thanks!
This is a very erroneous article. Prime ark freedom’s earlyness is not an attribute of primocane fruit. You’re still harvesting floricane fruits in the early spring. It is just coincidence that this variety is early blooming and also a primocane variety. The primocane fruit is a second crop that occurs after the floricane fruit. Also this definitely wasn’t arkansas’s first thornless variety.