HELP.....How do I bring a blackberry bush to life!

QueenB.

I moved into my home a few years ago and down one side of the garden was this huge tangle of thorned plants. At the time we did think it may be a blackberry bush but when nothing happened we assumed we where wrong. Several times a year we cut it right back as with three kids its a bit of a dnager. Yesterday however we went to cut it back as usual only to find it had about 10 berries on it !
So i guess it is a blackberry bush after all. So how do I get it to produce more fruit as the kids love blackberry picking, it is a yearly tradtion so it would be great to actually have some in our own garden.

Thanks.

Mortal

You may well have pruned off the growth from last year, which is what you need to fruit.
To prune plants, cut off the canes that have already fruited at ground level, and tie in the new shoots to your support for next years' fruit

laurel7172

If you're worried about safety, and are willing to be a little bit patient, then I bought thornless blackberry canes for £1.99 each in the spring from Homebase. They don't fruit in their first year, and at one point I thought they'd died, but they're now quite healthy, bushy little plants.

So, with a year's head start, I'm now hoping for blackberries next summer-without the thorns.

Davesnave

Thorny blackberries are hard to control and give a poor return for the amount of space they occupy if not tied back, so far better to go for a thornless one, which can be trained along a fence or wall, then propagated easily by layering ends of stems if you want more.

Blackberries fruit on the previous season's wood. Once they have fruited, canes should be cut away and the nerwer ones tied-in.

surfsister

to keep yours prune lightly as described then feed or put compost/rotted manure around bottom of canes try not to be touching canes. it's very hard to kill established blackberry bushes! why not plant one thornless variety nearby to be doubly sure.

Primrose

I echo the suggestion to plant a thornless blackberry bush if the one you have has thorns on it. They can fruit very prolifically once they're established and are much easier to control than a "wild" one which has got thorns on. You may find that even a thornless one will develop little "suckers" which are rogue shoots which come up from the base of the plant which have thorns on them. These should be pruned off quickly as soon as you spot them. Himalayan Giant is a good thornless blackberry and once established will bear a lot of fruit. It can quite happily also be grown on a north facing fence if that's the only spare place you've got for it. The fruit will just ripen a little bit later than if it were located anywhere else in your garden.