
Planting, Growing, and Harvesting Blackberries
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I believe this comment is incorrect:
"If you have primocane-fruiting erect blackberries, cut all canes off just above the ground in the late winter for the best fruit."
I have the Prime Ark Freedom. According to various online sources, canes should be pruned to the ground after the second fruiting year.
In terms of the modern blackberries that fruit on primocanes, you could do it either way. 😄 The floricane crop will be harvested in late spring/early summer, whereas the primocane crop is harvested in late summer/early autumn. Double cropping does not reduce the yield of primocanes, and if you cut down the canes after the primocane crop, the next year you’ll get a bigger primocane crop. So, for those primocane fruiting varieties, you could grow them either way and still have berries.
I have a crop of blackberries that have some light brown spots on some of the berries. They taste okay but are they diseased?
The plants are 1-3 years old. This is the first time we have had this problem.
We've noticed the same thing on our fruit. It turned out to be the leftover bloom that turned brownish and kind of stuck to some of the fruit. We run our berries through a juicer after rinsing to make seedless jam and cordials. The old blooms don't seem to hurt anything.
Checking on my blackberries that are about three years old, I found more than a few canes have tipped over and grown into the ground. Should I cut the end off and remove it from the ground or leave it? Last year as not a good year for our berries and this year the long stems seem bare of leaves on the middle of the stem but leafy on the ends and at the ground. Any Information would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Mary, your plants that tip over and seem to ‘grow into the ground’ are merely doing what God intended them to do which is go forth and multiply. This process of tipping is much like that of strawberry plants sending out runners and starting new plants. Once the tip has ‘stuck to the ground’ it has essentially rooted a new plant. You can simply cut the original cane off about 1’ from the ground and carefully dig up the new area and transplant it somewhere else or place in a pot to cultivate and give to a friend. If you simply want the original cane back up to train just cut it off where it has attached to the ground - no harm done.
We have thorn less blackberries and while some turn black a lot have red on them and never turn ripe. This has been going on for years, new canes come up every year and I wonder if the type I have just need to be replaced.
When we've harvested our thornless blackberries, the "plug" or end-stem remains in the berry. Does that mean it's not quite ripe yet, too hot, not enough water? When I cook those berries, the white "plug" gets hard and they need to be fished out of the cooked berries.
No, that is simply a quirk of blackberries! Blackberries retain the core when they come off the stem, whereas raspberries do not. This is one easy way to tell the berries apart at a glance!
We have a blackberry patch behind our house. The neighborhood deer herd seems to love them and have decided they wanted a front yard patch. The deer manage the backyard patch and now I know how to better manage the front. The birds have also contributed to the front yard patch by dropping seeds in my yew trees. Our four legged and winged farmhands also manage our strawberry patches.
The irony, my husband and I don't like blackberries. We do like strawberries.
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