Is this hard? How do they grow? Been thinking of building some along a fence I need to build in the front yard. Can I mulch with plastic or do they have runners? Do they flower? Are they pretty? DO they need alot of water?
In article , snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com says... :) Is this hard? How do they grow? Been thinking of building some along a :) fence I need to build in the front yard. Can I mulch with plastic or do :) they have runners? Do they flower? Are they pretty? DO they need alot :) of water? :) :) Not sure they would be the best choice to use for landscaping along a fence. For the berry production, you cut much them back after harvest so they can be unsightly. If you let them go wild they will have runners popping up all over the yard.
We have 11 acres covered with wild blackberries (commonly called dewberries), and while they are pretty (they produce small white flowers), they can quickly become a pain in the wazoo, LOL! They do produce runners and if you don't keep them cut back to a tolerable amount will overtake your whole yard. When I first moved here, they were in the asparagus garden, mixed in with the flower gardens, etc...I would pick a plant up and pull and these HUGE runners would stretch for what seemed like miles:)
I'm not saying they're a pest though...I love the blackberries we get for pies, jam, etc., but just know what you're getting into before you plant some:) And I would suggest thornless, because the ones we have are full of thorns, and they hurt like the dickens when they get in your fingers!
Hope this helps:) Angie in the Boonies of East Texas
I'm no expert but in the NW they're a pest, hardy as can be and they're not easily removed if they like your soil. I'd also recommend the thornless type. There a properties up here that have them so thick that the stocks get over a inch thick.
Those are Himalayan blackberries. They are not native and are very invasive.
wherever you may be, they are rampant weeds. Buy a machete if you plan to plant them. I have them on fence rows in the back yard, two types. The berries are good, and they also have different harvest times. They are ugly, thorny, and messy, they catch your shirt and your glasses when you ride your mower past them, I mow and spray them if they only attempt to cross a certain line, but I am not one to refuse free fresh berries.
Hi Stryped, You've already gotten some good advice about growing blackberries. too do not recommend you growing them along a fence line. Here' growing info on them so you can see how they should be grown.
-- Newt
snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
are you completely clue free? can you not read? (i thought shy people read a lot...) anyway, blackberries are weeds. they are easy to grow. anything that bears fruit has flowers (skipped biology, did you?). they need a lot of sun, so if it's sunny along your fence, & the soil is decent, they will do ok. they aren't particularly attractive & you will need to prune out old canes every year & tie up the current growing canes. how much you need to water them depends on what your soil is like & how much rain you get. if it's really dry, you get crappy dried out berries. given a choice, i'd grow raspberries over blackberries any day. lee
Thanks for the response but not for the smart tone.
Blackberries don't need to be weeds, though the amount of care you describe to keep them tidy & maximumly fruitful can be a bother compared to low-maintenance things. There are many restrained cultivars & hybrids, & even thornless varieties, which I find do have a degree of ornamental value even apart from their great fruits. Even our native blackberry which creeps along the ground is a pretty thing, like a groundcover vine. I don't encourage that stuff, the fruits are too small to grow them for that purpose, but they're not actively ugly, they're as pretty as many a strictly ornamental vine.
In our area the huge Himalayan blackberries are so easily harvested from roadsides & meadow margins & alleys & along railroad tracks, & the fruit so enormous & tasty, I wouldn't personally want to try to compete with what's growing free by taking up garden space with littler briars that would produce smaller fruits than can be gotten freely during a short walk with a bucket in hand. But I did plant thornless loganberries at Sinlur Gardens this past year, they can have an almost woody form at their heart & produce sideways canes from its upright center, & look quite ornamental even pruned back to the center (or so I've seen in other gardens, & hope I can train these thornless ones to look as nice). The loganberries now flank an old raspberry patch, which is merely cut to the ground each year to start over so not much labor in that. If after a year the rhubus area hasn't seemed too much a bother of maintenance, & have seemed sufficiently attractive since even the fruiting stuff has to serve double-duty for prettiness too, I'll add one more hybridized blackberry such as boysenberry or marionberry.
But I also planted three young serviceberries of two species near the same area, so that if the rhubus are too bothersome to care for properly, they can slowly be supplanted by large woody shrubs that are almost care-free while producing wonderfully tasty fruits. In my own small gardens I don't have the room to experiment like this, so this job with SinLur has been superdooper for pursuing several projects I lacked room to do at home, & I have already started some Sinlur Stoneworks & Gardens pages at my website, labeled as separate from my own home, & it's a struggle not to get too possessive of Sinlur, but what an opportunity to improve & extend an ENORMOUS garden rather than just my wee property.
-paghat the ratgirl
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