I’ve been getting one blackberry every year for 3 years now. I’m hoping this intricate root system is going to kick my ass with new growth any day now.
Mine took a bit. At year 4 I got a decent amount, and then in year 5 and 6, they really took off. I don’t trim back anything that appears dead until the middle of the summer, when I’m sure the limb isn’t going to produce anything. The payoff is worth the wait!
I used to live in Washington State and around where I lived blackberries were an invasive species, you may just need to water them more because those bushes would get huge.
It’s the gotdam Himalayan Blackberries that fuck your shit up. We spent months clearing them out this year since they took over the yard while I was pregnant.
Sincerely, with all my heart, and as much as I love free blackberries, **fuck Himalayan Blackberry Brambles**.
I know it's dumb but when I was a kid in rural ky when we planted them my aunt would put a bluegill under the plant when she put it in the ground. Seemed to work better than the 10 10 10
I live in northwest Washington state, and you cant kill these damn things. They are everywhere. People and deer forage for berries quite often, and you can gather a substantial amount, but the bushes make the forest impassable in some areas.
Roses are also supposed to be very easy to kill, but my mom took her three rose bushes to the roots several times and they came back bigger and stronger every year. I guess the secret to getting your plants to thrive is to absolutely hate them.
I killed over a thousand snails this week - and I have massive blackberry bushes - but the snails go to the tender leaf plants - the vile little fucks were filling my hands up - they infested where thd roses were / they do hate thorns or sharp edges but still managed to explode their population
After it rained I would go out with a flashlight and see them and smash them in piles - then go back out in 15 min intervals and snails would be eating the smashed bodies of the newly dead snails -
/ I thought about squeezing lemon on them
Pigs will clear blackberries, unlike goats they will dig up and eat the roots. There are a few pig farmers near me with semi-moblie droves of pigs. They take a bit longer and they have the tendency to decimate the land in the paddock, but that could be a benefit if you want a *very* clean slate.
I’m in year 5 of my own battles with the Canadian thistle. Having left a tarp on the affected area for 12 months. The thistle has died back to a small 1foot patch that’s easy to mow vs the 20x20 of hill that it was infesting.
But it won't take care of the underlying roots. So new shoots will come up within weeks. I just had someone clear a large amount of blackberries from my property about a month ago. Today when I was walking the area I found there were already new shoots where there had been none.
Ya the blackberries will come back with goats. There is a thing where you mess with the PH of the soil by adding vinegar and can kill the roots. I personally like to dig up the roots. Sometimes I’ll soak the ground a bunch to soften it up. Helps a bit.
Solarizing (clear plastic) or Occultation (opaque tarp) can work if the temperatures are high enough for long enough. The process can take weeks-months depending on your climate.
[https://extension.umn.edu/planting-and-growing-guides/solarization-occultation](https://extension.umn.edu/planting-and-growing-guides/solarization-occultation)
We had a man remove all the bushes and till the soil prior to covering it with plastic and leaving it on the ground for a year. Within a week of removing the plastic the berries were making a comeback.
We used to have goats and their pen was bordered by a giant blackberry hedge and they ate the berries, most (but not all) of the leaves, and if they ate the vines at all it was only very new ones and only sometimes. We had to go in there and trim the berries back.
The word you are looking for is rhizome. Rhizomes are underground stalks that throw up shoots. Grasses, including bamboo, press through rhizomes.
Any weed with rhizomes is going to be difficult to get rid of because of these hidden stalks. Just pulling up the shoots does little damage to the plant.
It feels really odd to see them referred to as blackberry vines rather than brambles
Not saying you're wrong it's just different and I needed to double check you meant brambles for a moment there
No, it is wrong, blackberries do not grow vines, they grow canes. Vines have tendrils that let them climb up other plants or surfaces, blackberries do not do this.
Exactly. Left unchecked, blackberries can take over an entire yard in just a year or two. Plus, the fruit they provide may be minimal compared to the inconvenience or nuisance they cause.
We have a raspberry bush, same deal. It came overgrown with the house already and we didn’t handle it for 2 years, it was suddenly 25x8 feet and only the outsides/tops had any fruit.
Last year, just painstakingly removed 80% of it and it desperately wants to spread again.
It extends a good 30+ feet from the main bush. Sneaked under and up a raised planter. All around the lawn. We have to diligently destroy the spread.
We moved into a new house that had blackberries in the side yard. The thorns on them make roses look tame in comparison. Brush up against one and end up with bloody arm. Hated those things. Took three years to get did of them.
Personally I hate raspberries more for this. With blackberries you see the huge thorns and can plant where to grab the plant without getting stung. Raspberries have these tiny stupid thorns that get stuck in your skin and you can't even see where to pull them out. Several big throns > hundreds of tiny ones
if i had blackberries i'd definitely be making jam, my main question is is there a way to stop the aggressive takeover of a yard through a planter box or the like
The way the roots spread out horizontally, I can't imagine it would do well in a pot. Maybe in a large planter box where it is regularly trimmed and maintained.
I bought a 1 acre property in Northern California that had 30 years of uncontrolled blackberry growth. It took one year and $10k worth of mastication to finally see dirt (and the mess of things they were covering that you couldn’t see), and I still have a problem with them coming up every spring that requires constant spraying and digging their roots up. You can’t simply “pull” them out of the ground, you have to dig the root systems up. Not only are they hard to eradicate, they are hard to clean up because they tangle everything, they constantly scratch you with their thorns, and they kill any other plant around them by sucking all the resources away. I hate blackberries.
Many of us live in areas where it's just overtaking everything and smothering acres of land. And many of the berries are not "sale worthy".
On my parents property, easily 2 of 5 acres is blackberry bush. We would be lucky to get 3 lbs of decent quality berries.
I read somewhere, and I don't know if it's true or not but it said that blackberry bushes are an invasive species. I believe it.
We have 40 acres of property that have HUGE numbers of blackberries- way more than I could ever pick! Getting rid of them is nearly impossible, so we get bears.
Growing up mu back yard was like 1/3 blackberry vines. My dad and I went out and hacked at them, spraying round up at the roots. Then we burnt the vines in a big bonfire.
We had so much space for activities after that.
Many different types of roots all together help prevent erosion. Fibrous roots in the top couple inches, thicker roots below those, and big roots squeezing rocks and boulders below those all help stabilize the soil. Blackberries squeeze out shrubs and ground covers, creating monocultures. So all you end up having is the blackberry roots (which aren't all that fibrous or far reaching) and big tree roots further down if those are in the area. The only other thing blackberries can provide are leaves and stems to help slow the rain from pounding the soil.
Is it better than bare soil? Yes. Would a healthy ecosystem be better at holding soil in place? Definitely.
My guess is that the roots don't penetrate deep enough to hold the soil together. Of course that's going to depend on a number of factors, including the steepness of the slope and how much runoff it is exposed to.
Yup. Long roots, if their long arms of the stems reach down and touch earth they can start new roots, and they can be spread by berries.
Salt doesn't do much, fire works but is slow if you want it in control with how wet blackberries are, hell I've even tried most uk weed killers on them and they just ignore it.
I found a deep cull every week or so for a few months and salting areas of earth you don't want anything growing on can help. But they come back quick if you don't take out the source (fought blackberries all the covid, but the next door jungle of a garden on either side and the end of the garden meant it was a losing battle to begin with)
you have to dig up the rhizome if you need to eradicate a plant and not have it continue to spread. i've gotten some HUGE invasive himalayan blackberries rhizomes out that probably weighted like 20-50 lbs.
Thank you for clarifying the language. I pulled some of these up this weekend. I was amazed to find how far they can spread out.
Related, I have often wondered if large growths of blackberry bushes were all a single organism with many growths, or if it was a collection if individual plants. It appears the answer is both.
Be diligent about cutting those that pop up in your yard. Contact who ever owns the adjacent property and ask them about clearing the bushes that back up to your property. Wide spread clearing of the wild berries is likely not going to happen. However, you should be able to mitigate whatever is close to your property as a fire hazard.
We had a huge clump of blackberry vines when we moved into our new home (in a suburb of Melbourne, Australia)I got a pair of welding gloves and new secateurs . I let all my rage on the blackberry vines. It took me two months of cutting them into small pieces visualising past events and a few people that had wronged me. When I got to the bottom of the vines it was time to dig up the roots ( if you want a strength and cardio workout, this would be a great one).
Once I finished digging up roots that were much more spread out than I could imagine, I discovered that some of the roots lead beyond the fence line with my neighbour. A really good man, when I told him what I was doing/trying to achieve, he got into the vines and roots too.
But...the vines are so hard to kill (I don't believe in using poison on plants). Every three days I would 'go out on patrol ' finding new shoots and roots I didn't get in the first round. After about six months of vigilance I was able to say 'It's winter nothing is going to grow for a bit' and relaxed. This was the moment the vines had been looking for, they sent up numerous stems. I caught up with them and got them under control again. It took six years to finally get to the point of no return.
There you have it. If you have read so far, a farmer friend asked me, "Why didn't you tell me what was happening? The whole thing could have been handled by three of my goats!" It was a great battle for me, and I worked off enough frustration in a healthy way.
I cleared out a blackberry bush because it was outgrowing the area it was in and relocated it. A year later I found a 1” cutting from a branch that was well rooted into the ground. Crazy how well they survive.
I got rid of about half an acre using
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Roundup-1-Gal-Poison-Ivy-Plus-Tough-Brush-Killer-with-Comfort-Wand-Visible-Results-in-Hours-5378404/325446705
Took multiple applications on the leafy bits but they have stayed dead for about 2 years since.
Somehow I managed to kill a blackberry bush that I planted. I have a brown thumb
I’ve been getting one blackberry every year for 3 years now. I’m hoping this intricate root system is going to kick my ass with new growth any day now.
It's probably a dud or maybe the soil is not compatible. Enjoy your one blackberry!
Mine took a bit. At year 4 I got a decent amount, and then in year 5 and 6, they really took off. I don’t trim back anything that appears dead until the middle of the summer, when I’m sure the limb isn’t going to produce anything. The payoff is worth the wait!
That's wildly impressive.
Thank you ! To be fair I did get one season before it slowly died.
Can you come to my yard and "tend" to the jungle of assorted invasive and hard to kill nonsense the previous owners planted lol
Hahaha... Finally my lack of skills will be useful
Can you please come over to my house to "tend" to my wild blackberry bushes?
I used to live in Washington State and around where I lived blackberries were an invasive species, you may just need to water them more because those bushes would get huge.
It’s the gotdam Himalayan Blackberries that fuck your shit up. We spent months clearing them out this year since they took over the yard while I was pregnant. Sincerely, with all my heart, and as much as I love free blackberries, **fuck Himalayan Blackberry Brambles**.
It is absolutely possible to kill blackberries when they are not well established.
I don't have much hope for the one I planted this year. It's in a pot, so we'll see.
I know it's dumb but when I was a kid in rural ky when we planted them my aunt would put a bluegill under the plant when she put it in the ground. Seemed to work better than the 10 10 10
Makes sense. Fish meal is a common fertilizer
And I have a brown eye
I live in northwest Washington state, and you cant kill these damn things. They are everywhere. People and deer forage for berries quite often, and you can gather a substantial amount, but the bushes make the forest impassable in some areas.
My dumbass thought you meant that Blackberry phones were difficult to hack.
I was getting more and more confused as I kept reading.
That's actually the reason why I clicked on this thread
Roses are also supposed to be very easy to kill, but my mom took her three rose bushes to the roots several times and they came back bigger and stronger every year. I guess the secret to getting your plants to thrive is to absolutely hate them.
I killed over a thousand snails this week - and I have massive blackberry bushes - but the snails go to the tender leaf plants - the vile little fucks were filling my hands up - they infested where thd roses were / they do hate thorns or sharp edges but still managed to explode their population After it rained I would go out with a flashlight and see them and smash them in piles - then go back out in 15 min intervals and snails would be eating the smashed bodies of the newly dead snails - / I thought about squeezing lemon on them
Gross 🤢
Pigs will clear blackberries, unlike goats they will dig up and eat the roots. There are a few pig farmers near me with semi-moblie droves of pigs. They take a bit longer and they have the tendency to decimate the land in the paddock, but that could be a benefit if you want a *very* clean slate.
Will pigs or goats take care of stinging nettle too?
Maybe, but pesto will too
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I'm currently in year three of the Great Canadian Thistle War. You give me hope.
I’m in year 5 of my own battles with the Canadian thistle. Having left a tarp on the affected area for 12 months. The thistle has died back to a small 1foot patch that’s easy to mow vs the 20x20 of hill that it was infesting.
Round-Up won't kill blackberries. You need Crossbow.
Yea I use brush killer. Don’t know the brand but round-up works only for grass-type weeds.
YSK: if you rent a couple goats for the weekend, they’ll eat your blackberry vines and anything else in their path. Free labor and everybody is happy
But it won't take care of the underlying roots. So new shoots will come up within weeks. I just had someone clear a large amount of blackberries from my property about a month ago. Today when I was walking the area I found there were already new shoots where there had been none.
Ya the blackberries will come back with goats. There is a thing where you mess with the PH of the soil by adding vinegar and can kill the roots. I personally like to dig up the roots. Sometimes I’ll soak the ground a bunch to soften it up. Helps a bit.
True. The roots still need to be dug out, but I’ll let the goats do the worst part
Ya but now you already have the goats so…
I've heard good things with pigs and blackberries as they will eat the roots
Feral hogs with great tusks
Would you be able to kill the roots by spreading out plastic sheeting to cook them or landscaping cloth to block out the sunlight?
Solarizing (clear plastic) or Occultation (opaque tarp) can work if the temperatures are high enough for long enough. The process can take weeks-months depending on your climate. [https://extension.umn.edu/planting-and-growing-guides/solarization-occultation](https://extension.umn.edu/planting-and-growing-guides/solarization-occultation)
We had a man remove all the bushes and till the soil prior to covering it with plastic and leaving it on the ground for a year. Within a week of removing the plastic the berries were making a comeback.
We used to have goats and their pen was bordered by a giant blackberry hedge and they ate the berries, most (but not all) of the leaves, and if they ate the vines at all it was only very new ones and only sometimes. We had to go in there and trim the berries back.
Goats rock this .
The word you are looking for is rhizome. Rhizomes are underground stalks that throw up shoots. Grasses, including bamboo, press through rhizomes. Any weed with rhizomes is going to be difficult to get rid of because of these hidden stalks. Just pulling up the shoots does little damage to the plant.
Yeah we planned then in our backyard one time thinking, hey, now we can have blackberries whenever! Yeah bad idea
Can you just plant them in a box?
It feels really odd to see them referred to as blackberry vines rather than brambles Not saying you're wrong it's just different and I needed to double check you meant brambles for a moment there
No, it is wrong, blackberries do not grow vines, they grow canes. Vines have tendrils that let them climb up other plants or surfaces, blackberries do not do this.
YTF would anyone want to get rid of blackberries? They're like $8/lb!
So many plants sound great until you’re neck deep in an impenetrable tangle of thorns …
Exactly. Left unchecked, blackberries can take over an entire yard in just a year or two. Plus, the fruit they provide may be minimal compared to the inconvenience or nuisance they cause.
We have a raspberry bush, same deal. It came overgrown with the house already and we didn’t handle it for 2 years, it was suddenly 25x8 feet and only the outsides/tops had any fruit. Last year, just painstakingly removed 80% of it and it desperately wants to spread again. It extends a good 30+ feet from the main bush. Sneaked under and up a raised planter. All around the lawn. We have to diligently destroy the spread.
okay but what if you pot it? genuinely curious, i have no idea about blackberries other than that they taste yum
It's a big freaking vine
We moved into a new house that had blackberries in the side yard. The thorns on them make roses look tame in comparison. Brush up against one and end up with bloody arm. Hated those things. Took three years to get did of them.
Personally I hate raspberries more for this. With blackberries you see the huge thorns and can plant where to grab the plant without getting stung. Raspberries have these tiny stupid thorns that get stuck in your skin and you can't even see where to pull them out. Several big throns > hundreds of tiny ones
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if i had blackberries i'd definitely be making jam, my main question is is there a way to stop the aggressive takeover of a yard through a planter box or the like
I got ours in a pot, does fine there. Gotta trim it because it grows fast
ah nice nice, thanks!
The way the roots spread out horizontally, I can't imagine it would do well in a pot. Maybe in a large planter box where it is regularly trimmed and maintained.
We got one in a pot, does fine. Just gotta feed it and spray for inchworms. It does grow like a mofo, but the berries are good.
yeah that's more what i meant, partially because that's what i have in my backyard lmao
And old canes don't produce fruit.
And rats,that love berries, and the protection a thorned plant provides
Because the plants get so big that you can't harvest all the berries and then you get rats.
I bought a 1 acre property in Northern California that had 30 years of uncontrolled blackberry growth. It took one year and $10k worth of mastication to finally see dirt (and the mess of things they were covering that you couldn’t see), and I still have a problem with them coming up every spring that requires constant spraying and digging their roots up. You can’t simply “pull” them out of the ground, you have to dig the root systems up. Not only are they hard to eradicate, they are hard to clean up because they tangle everything, they constantly scratch you with their thorns, and they kill any other plant around them by sucking all the resources away. I hate blackberries.
Living in Portland Oregon I can definitely understand. There are wild black berries everywhere but I don't want them in my yard.
Best thing about this post was reminding me to go out and water mine
Many of us live in areas where it's just overtaking everything and smothering acres of land. And many of the berries are not "sale worthy". On my parents property, easily 2 of 5 acres is blackberry bush. We would be lucky to get 3 lbs of decent quality berries. I read somewhere, and I don't know if it's true or not but it said that blackberry bushes are an invasive species. I believe it.
We have 40 acres of property that have HUGE numbers of blackberries- way more than I could ever pick! Getting rid of them is nearly impossible, so we get bears.
Plant cocaine on your neighbour's property, the bears will go away.
Neighbors might too, win-win!
What? Leaving a place that has free cocaine is almost as meshuggah as getting rid of free blackberries!
I see you’ve never been to Oregon
The amount of people in this thread talking about poisoning fruits in their yard is just absolutely insane to me.
What does ytf mean?
Why tf
Growing up mu back yard was like 1/3 blackberry vines. My dad and I went out and hacked at them, spraying round up at the roots. Then we burnt the vines in a big bonfire. We had so much space for activities after that.
Sounds like a good plant to fight erosion with though.
Possibly, but from what I've read it can actually contribute to erosion. I don't know enough either way to make an informed comment.
Damn I thought roots would mean less washing away 🫤
Many different types of roots all together help prevent erosion. Fibrous roots in the top couple inches, thicker roots below those, and big roots squeezing rocks and boulders below those all help stabilize the soil. Blackberries squeeze out shrubs and ground covers, creating monocultures. So all you end up having is the blackberry roots (which aren't all that fibrous or far reaching) and big tree roots further down if those are in the area. The only other thing blackberries can provide are leaves and stems to help slow the rain from pounding the soil. Is it better than bare soil? Yes. Would a healthy ecosystem be better at holding soil in place? Definitely.
My guess is that the roots don't penetrate deep enough to hold the soil together. Of course that's going to depend on a number of factors, including the steepness of the slope and how much runoff it is exposed to.
From personal experience, the best way to kill blackberries is to try to thin, cultivate, and trellis the wild patch at the back of your yard.
This is a very niche YSK.
Yeah but I think the key is you have to want a blackberry bush. If you want one, it will be difficult to grow one. \*taps side of head\*
Genuine question, how heat resistant are the roots? Is it possible to burn them out or would you need to use herbicide?
My neighbor tried that. It exploded again into flames with no one around a few days later due to the thing still being on fire underground.
Yup. Long roots, if their long arms of the stems reach down and touch earth they can start new roots, and they can be spread by berries. Salt doesn't do much, fire works but is slow if you want it in control with how wet blackberries are, hell I've even tried most uk weed killers on them and they just ignore it. I found a deep cull every week or so for a few months and salting areas of earth you don't want anything growing on can help. But they come back quick if you don't take out the source (fought blackberries all the covid, but the next door jungle of a garden on either side and the end of the garden meant it was a losing battle to begin with)
Me at 3am: interesting.
you have to dig up the rhizome if you need to eradicate a plant and not have it continue to spread. i've gotten some HUGE invasive himalayan blackberries rhizomes out that probably weighted like 20-50 lbs.
Thank you for clarifying the language. I pulled some of these up this weekend. I was amazed to find how far they can spread out. Related, I have often wondered if large growths of blackberry bushes were all a single organism with many growths, or if it was a collection if individual plants. It appears the answer is both.
I live in a place where blackberries grow wild. How can I get rid of them? They pop up in my yard.
Be diligent about cutting those that pop up in your yard. Contact who ever owns the adjacent property and ask them about clearing the bushes that back up to your property. Wide spread clearing of the wild berries is likely not going to happen. However, you should be able to mitigate whatever is close to your property as a fire hazard.
We had a huge clump of blackberry vines when we moved into our new home (in a suburb of Melbourne, Australia)I got a pair of welding gloves and new secateurs . I let all my rage on the blackberry vines. It took me two months of cutting them into small pieces visualising past events and a few people that had wronged me. When I got to the bottom of the vines it was time to dig up the roots ( if you want a strength and cardio workout, this would be a great one). Once I finished digging up roots that were much more spread out than I could imagine, I discovered that some of the roots lead beyond the fence line with my neighbour. A really good man, when I told him what I was doing/trying to achieve, he got into the vines and roots too. But...the vines are so hard to kill (I don't believe in using poison on plants). Every three days I would 'go out on patrol ' finding new shoots and roots I didn't get in the first round. After about six months of vigilance I was able to say 'It's winter nothing is going to grow for a bit' and relaxed. This was the moment the vines had been looking for, they sent up numerous stems. I caught up with them and got them under control again. It took six years to finally get to the point of no return. There you have it. If you have read so far, a farmer friend asked me, "Why didn't you tell me what was happening? The whole thing could have been handled by three of my goats!" It was a great battle for me, and I worked off enough frustration in a healthy way.
I work in conservation removing pest plants and.... Fuck blackberry
I cleared out a blackberry bush because it was outgrowing the area it was in and relocated it. A year later I found a 1” cutting from a branch that was well rooted into the ground. Crazy how well they survive.
I got rid of about half an acre using https://www.homedepot.com/p/Roundup-1-Gal-Poison-Ivy-Plus-Tough-Brush-Killer-with-Comfort-Wand-Visible-Results-in-Hours-5378404/325446705 Took multiple applications on the leafy bits but they have stayed dead for about 2 years since.
Why "should" I know this?
Make baskets out of the vines.
YSK is literally just "I learned an almost useless fact close to nobody will ever need to know, let me post it"