Growing Blackberries

Growing blackberries is rewarding, although it can take a few years until they start producing heavily. Blackberries are perennial plants that will keep producing year after year.

The taste is sublime when they’re ripe on the bush. Blackberries honestly taste like candy, and you won’t experience this taste unless you grow or pick them fresh. Grocery stores often harvest berries under-ripe so they last longer on the store shelves.

How to Grow Blackberries

• In neat tiny rows that you prune down every season
• Wild and crazy and not pruned

Blackberries benefit from being pruned because you need new canes for continuous good fruit development. That being said, I’ve also seen huge blackberry bushes that were never pruned and had huge yields (along with thorns!).

Blackberries and Sun

Full sun is best but they can handle partial shade. 6-8 hours of sunshine is best.

Soil for Blackberries

They relatively easy going but they do need well drained soil and won’t do well in clay. Amend your soil for better drainage if you have clay. Blackberries like a soil a pH that is slightly acidic, somewhere between 5.5 and 7.0.

Pollinators for Blackberries

Growing flowers that pollinators love close to your blackberries can increase pollination rates by attracting more bees to the area.

Mulch for Blackberries

Mulching helps to suppress weeds. Reformation acres has some great tips for mulching berries.

Blackberry Growing Tips: First Year

When planting your berry bushes the crown should be right at soil level, with the roots just under the surface. Water well the first year for good root development. Prune back in the fall and apply a fertilizer the following spring.

How to Prune Blackberries

• Depending on the variety, stake or trellis-train your blackberry plants to keep them more compact and upright.
• Pruning may vary depending on the blackberry variety you plant. Most berry bushes bear only once on 2-year-old canes. After the canes have produced fruit, you should prune them back to the ground to leave room for the stronger, 1-year-old canes.
• Some pruning should be done every spring to keep the plants from becoming tangled and to improve their ability to bear. Prune trailing blackberries in the spring for good growth habits. Prune each main cane back to 3-4’. Then cut back side branches to about 12”, leaving five or six buds on each. Erect and semi-erect varieties should be tipped or cut back to 3-4’ in midsummer. This forces lateral branches to emerge from buds below this point.
• Later in the fall, after they are dormant, cut back the laterals to 16-18”. Fruit will be borne on these laterals the following summer (after which, the canes should then be removed to make room for next season’s growth).

Blackberry Varieties

Before choosing your blackberry varieties you’ll need to figure out where you’ll plant them. You’ll also need to check if the variety is self-pollinating or if they need another variety for cross-pollination. This means that the plant might flower but produce no fruit if the pollination doesn’t happen.

We’re growing our blackberry bushes against a chain link fence in our permaculture food forest.  Although we’ll still prune them back in the fall, we’ll also let them grow a little wild to create a bush fence to deter the elk that live in the area. Some gardeners like to use wattle fences because they’re cheaper and sustainable for their blackberry bushes.

Choosing a Blackberry Type

• Trailing varieties require a trellis, and are less cold hardy than erect varieties.
• Erect varieties grow upwards and can be left as a large bush without pruning on the edges of your garden landscaping.
• Thornless are semi-erect without the prickly stems

Blackberry Fruiting Chart

Variety	Fruiting Season	Flavor	Berry Size	Growth Habit	Zones
Thorny
Prime Ark 45	*	Very Good	M-L	Erect	4-7
Shawnee	3	Very Good	L	Erect	6-9
Thornless
Apache	3	Excellent	VL	Erect	6-10
Arapaho	3	Excellent	M	Erect	6-10
Chester	4	Fair	L	Trailing	5-8
Natchez	3	Excellent	L	Trailing/Semi	6-12
Osage	3	Excellent	ML	Erect	6-9
Ouachita	3	Excellent	M	Trelling/Semi	6-12
Prime Ark Freedom	*	Excellent	VL	Erect	TBD
Triple Crown	3	Excellent	L	Trelling/Semi	5-12
Von	5	Excellent	L	Erect	TBD

Fruiting Season – 1 being the earliest and 4 being the latest
Fruit Size – S=Small | M=Medium | L=Large | VL=Very Large
* Primocane

Graph from Indiana Berry