How to Grow Sweet, Juicy Blackberries in Your Garden

Lifting, Pruning, and Cultivating

You’ve successfully planted your main berry brambles, and they’re alive. Hooray! Now what?

In the first year, it’s super important that you do. Not. Let your blackberries produce fruit.

When you cut back on the flowers the first year, you let the main plant focus on growing strong roots and more canes for the following years. I go into more detail about this in my Pruning post. For reference, with good pruning, cutting, and cultivating practices, your blackberry bramble can show this progression:

Okay. You’ve planted your canes. You pruned the flowers in the first year. It’s the second year, and your canes are now bursting with blackberry fruits. Major huzzah!.

Your fruits will go from from green and hard, to red and softer, to a dark, nearly black (hence the name) purple and fairly soft.

Blackberries do not continue to ripen after harvest, so be sure to pick fruits that have entirely changed their final color. They also rot super fast on the plant after fully ripening (as in, within a couple of days, and less time when it’s very hot or rainy), so make sure you’re checking your bramble every day for fruit.

If the berries are ripe, they should come off the plant easily. Be careful not to damage the rest of the cane, or you could knock other berries off or even tear the plant.

Some things to watch out for on and around your blackberries:

• Birds. Birds love berries so much! To keep birds from eating your bramble, drape it with bird netting. We’ve used this before and it works, but it’s a pain to take down at the end of the season because it gets tangled up with the plant, and it’s not good to throw away. Keeping other, more appealing plants and leaving them for the birds is another option. That’s why we leave wild blackberries on the edges of our property. You can also beat the birds at their own game by picking your blackberries early every day.
• Stinkbugs and Junebugs. You’ll run into these guys every time you harvest. They won’t harm you, but they’ll chomp on your berries. We get a good harvest, so I don’t use any pesticides on them. I just kind of live with them and the scream I let out every once in a while when I pick a junebug instead of a berry.
• Mice and Snakes. Thus far, these two animals have not caused us any harm. However, they might if you let the grass grow too high around your bushes or if you don’t pick your berries quickly enough before they fall to the ground. (Dropped berries can attract mice, which then attract snakes. Just in case, make sure to wear closed shoes and long pants when you harvest.
• Yellow Jackets, Wasps, etc. Yet another reason to always wear boots. There is a chance that these bugs will hang out and even build a nest near your bramble if you leave holes and/or a lot of berries to rot on the ground. Keep the area cleared and filled in, and when picking berries, always wear clothes that will protect you.
• Thorns. If you’ve got a thorny variety, that is. There’s no doubt that those thorns can rip through skin as well as denim. I think you should wear long sleeves and gloves when picking berries from thorny canes.

Starting Plants: Canes vs. Seeds

It’s much simpler to start your blackberries from canes or nursery plants than from seeds, and you’ll get fruit much faster. You can get bare-root or flowering canes from a nursery. You can also get canes from your neighbor, or pull wild ones from one part of your yard into another. However, I strongly recommend starting your blackberries with nursery plants. Why?.

Getting your plants from a reputable nursery means you’ll know the precise variety and characteristics of your blackberry. Take canes from your neighbor Joe, and you’ll probably get blackberries. But they might be hybrids with other plants in the area, or they might be easily sick. Nursery canes are usually sterile (as in, disease-free) and tend to grow bigger, sweeter fruits. Also, I hate thorns, and picking blackberries is hard enough without having to avoid stems that hurt my hands. That’s why I love the thornless varieties we got from a cool local nursery.

Something to note: your nursery blackberry plants are likely a graft (that is, the blackberry plant is attached to another similar plant to enhance the coolest parts of a blackberry), so if that’s a concern, go ahead and go the wild route. Or just ask about the plant you’re getting. However, I’m a fan of the grafts, if you can’t tell.

Oh, and you can also grow your canes from seeds, although it will take hella longer to do so than from canes, and again, because many blackberry plants are actually hybrids or grafts, you may not even get fruits, or a similar fruit, from whatever blackberry you decided to put in the ground.

Okay, let’s plant these buggers. You’ve got your canes. Now what?

As I mentioned before, blackberries have very shallow roots, so you don’t need to plant them very deep. You do, however, want to clear the planting area of grass and other competing plants, because of those shallow roots. I recommend sheet mulching, and keeping the growing area well-mulched each season, to prevent this competition, as well as tall grass that may hide critters that hang out near blackberries, like mice and snakes.

Plant the canes maybe an inch deeper than the nursery container, making sure the roots are completely covered, but not so deep that the cane disappears. Plant canes 5-6 feet apart, at least, and keep rows 5-8 feet apart.

Blackberries will grow in many different types of soil, even in poor clay soil, but benefit from compost additions, looser soil than clay, mulching, and, most importantly, good drainage. Blackberries will not thrive with wet feet.

Grow The Most Incredible BLACKBERRIES In 5 Easy Steps!

FAQ

What fertilizer makes blackberries sweeter?

For blackberries, you can either use a complete 10-10-10 food or compost, manure, or another organic fertilizer. Apply 50 pounds (23 kg. ) of organic fertilizer per 100 feet (30. 5 m. ) in the late fall prior to the first frost.

Why are my blackberries not very sweet?

The amount of time the blackberry was allowed to ripen affects how bitter or sweet it will taste. Unripe berries start out bitter and that lessens as they ripen on the vine. When picked fully ripe, blackberries taste very sweet with no trace of bitterness.