Doc had already dug out one plant so we only have one left now but we have no doubts that it will try to take over the whole garden by the end of this season. This one bush could be more than enough for us to cope with. It is a cultivated variety yet it has viscous thorns. The runners are deadly and try to come up through the membrane and bark which covers the bare ground between the raised beds in Mr Macgregor’s Garden. If we did not enjoy the black jewels so much, we would kill the lot! But you can't beat apple and blackberry pie for with custard. Blackberries are the THE fruit of late summer and autumn. The smell of a single blackberry brings back many childhood memories of walking country lanes with a bucket overflowing with fruit and licking my sticky, purple fingers.
Technically, you need to selectively prune blackberries because they are biennial. This means they grow the stems one year and fruit on them the next. If you simply hack them back with a machete, you will remove the new wood and consequently lose all promise of fruit that season. However, finding a route to the base of the plant to cut out the old wood is easier set than done. It is like wrestling with a monster which always has the last laugh. It is sometimes difficult to identify the old and new wood so we just do what is possible and every few years, we have to carry out a full on assault - and sacrifice a year's fruit.
We grow autumn fruiting raspberries and they are much easier to maintain than the summer fruiting varieties, which behave like blackberries and need more selective pruning. In February, all you need to do to autumn raspberries is cut the canes to the ground, tidy up any weeds and mulch the soil with compost. However, we have given one corner of their bed a more thorough going over this winter. Lots of grass had infiltrated the canes so we needed to remove it all because it competes for moisture and stunts the growth of the canes. We have also thinned the canes and removed some of the older ones. Our canes fruit from July to November and we don’t miss summer raspberries because there are usually some lovely strawberries to keep us happy during May and June.
We also have a Japanese Wineberry plant and the fruits are similar in shape to raspberries but are tiny, dark red and taste of – wine! It is a much prettier plant, with white flowers and pink stems (with thorns!) which we train over the trellis and up a pergola. Yesterday, I pruned it carefully, removed the old wood and tied in the new shoots. Left to its own devices it would produce a huge, fountain of a bush with 6-7 foot arching stems. It sits next to the blackberry bush and is definitely the better looking of the two. The fruits are very juicy too and we love them on cereal in the mornings.
We have a couple of loganberry and tayberry plants but they are not very abundant and we don’t find them as tasty as blackberries, raspberries and the wineberries. However, they do add interest to Mr Macgregor’s garden and we like having them around.
Thankfully, we will have forgotten the pain of dealing with the blackberry bush by the time it fruits this year and by then we will be pleased we persevered with the task. We just have to remember to wear sleeves when we pick the fruits......
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