What variety, and when is the best time to plant them? I'm assuming bare roots in late winter/ early spring?? Any tips for planting them?
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I would think that they should be planted about the time the berries are ripe, which is during the spring. I think late spring. I don't remember when exactly they have berries on them. I know when I see all the white flowers, that it won't be long till we have berries. Where we used to live, there were some along the creek, they were pretty thick. That's been over two years ago. We just bought a place at the end of the summer and it has black berries all over the property, can't wait till spring. Plan on digging some up and replanting them in a area, where we can water them and so hopefully they grow to vey dense tangles of vines.
We dug some of the berries up before we left the place we live a few years ago, all of those died. It was a great surprise to find the ground is covered with black berries all over the place on the place we bought. -
Womack nursery has good varieties and descriptions of the berries best suited for your area. Plant root cuttings in late winter. Here is a short video clip from their webpage on how to plant BB root cuttings.
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University of Arkansas folks developed a primocane fruiting thornless blackberry that is Fantastic!! We bought plants from a couple different places, but the best, healthiest plants came from Stark Brothers. The variety we got was the Prime Ark Freedom Blackberry... They have really 2 crops of berries a year... Just do a search on Prime Ark Freedom berries and you'll find out all you ever needed to know about 'em.
Also, there's a guy on YouTube, TexasPrepper2 or TP2 that has some good information in his videos about planting and propagating blackberries. We planted 2 rows about 70 feet long, and from early March through the summer, we were getting 2 to 4 gallons of berries off those two little rows!! The berries are Yuuuuge and ever so sweet!!
Check out these pics from last year. The size comparison between regular dewberries and these thornless berries is eye-popping!!
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Slick, from what I gather you are from near my hometown... But I currently reside quite a bit further north.. Would that deter you from using these at all?
Thanks for all the replies!Comment
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I would highly recommend finding a thornless variety if at all possible. My parents neighbor at Lake Fork has the best variety I have ever seen/tasted. He always has some extra starters in the spring. PM me if you want to try and work something out.Comment
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I would think they would do well in your area. They were developed and grown in Arkansas and it gets pretty cold up there... I need to get out and prune mine now... some of my canes are over 8 feet tall... They're semi-erect too, so trellising them is pretty easy.Comment
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I was told that in the hotter, drier parts of the state, (central to west) to plant any woody plants bare rooted in the fall to give them time to develop some root structure, this would give them a head start on the hot dry weather they're going to deal with come summer. I don't know this, just been told, myself I'd go with the Womack nursery advice, they've never given me bad advice.Comment
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I had to go with the “thorned” varieties because the deer heavily browsed the thornless.Comment
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We are planting blackberries this coming fall. I have always enjoyed the floricane varieties more than the primocane ones. They just seem to ripen a bit sweeter. The varieties we have settled on are Brazos (higher acidity for cooking), as well as Kiowa and Chickasaw for eating. All of them are thorny varieties.
I came across a trellising method a few years ago that we are going to be using. It trellises the canes horizontally like grapes. One wire at 3’ and another at 5’. You suppress the new canes each year so the plant focuses all its energy on fruit production, then cut away the old canes as soon as fruiting is over. Pick the top 2 new primocanes and suppress the rest. Makes for VERY easy harvesting, and the you-pick operation that came up with this method claims 12-15lbs per plant, which will keep us swimming in berries if we can achieve even half that.
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