Blackberries are wonderful powerhouse foods and when looking at the price of fruits this year I obviously felt we should grow our own! We set out to get blackberries from the store and headed to our local Lowes. Unfortunately I didn't write the variety down but we bought three thornless blackberry plants in early March of this year.
These little babies were very root bound with dark purple colored leaves that felt very smooth and very stiff. As a first time blackberry grower I thought these were awesome and got to planting! Almost as soon as we planted them these blackberries changed their leaf color from dark purple to very bright red which alarmed me. They became crispy and many of the leaves died. I immediately called my sister who is a horticulture major and she suggested that it was a possible phosphorous issue or that it could have been that there was just too much rain and it was having a hard time establishing.
After she mentioned that I did what I usually do and asked more people to make sure. :) My husband said to just wait and see what happens and my parents who are retired farmers, said they'd be fine. I ended up doing the wait and see option. As it turns out, they were just fine and started putting on new growth! One started flowering and producing berries which I was not expecting for another year or so, and the others threw up new canes and now I am dealing with an entirely different issue.
These canes are big. They are going to grow to an indefinite amount and that will be what my fruit next year will grow on which is awesome. However, if you have canes that big they are just like any other tall plant and can get caught in the wind which is exactly what happened to ours and our little tomato trellises are not cutting it.
After researching this issue I found these berries need to be supported because if not they will grow roots along the stems which is awesome for propagation but not awesome if you want them to be tidy and nicely shaped. The trellis system we decided to go with is the T trellis where you drive a post into the ground on either side of the bed and place a horizontal board on the trellises. You then connect the posts with three cables that run the length of the bed and these will support the canes. That will be our next project so stay tuned for more on the berry trellis system!
At this point our blackberries are in year one so we don't have any berries currently but I cannot wait to harvest our first berries next year and make jam, ice cream, hand pies, and smoothies!
Thank you for reading! Let me know if you're growing blackberries too and how yours are growing!
~Everbearing Farm
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