Growing Blackberries In Your Own Garden and Backyard

Blackberries Growing in the Garden

Easy tips for growing blackberries in your own garden or backyard.

Learn how to plant, care for, and harvest blackberries.

Recipe included for making blackberry syrup from your own fresh berries.

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One of the sweetest memories of summer for you and your children is picking blackberries in your garden.

In no time at all, you can fill a basketful of plump berries from your backyard planting.

Easy to Grow Blackberries

Freshly Picked Ripe Blackberries

With a good yearly pruning to restrict growth, the fruit is incredibly easy to grow.

Plants often grow rampant if left unattended.

The bushy vines send up suckers from the roots and start new roots where stems touch the ground.

Planting Blackberries in Your Garden

With their habit of growth and thorny stems, growing a row of blackberries makes an excellent privacy fence for your backyard or vegetable garden.

Just be certain to plant them where they have room to roam.

Bush blackberries should be pinched back in summer to 30-36 inches and then pruned in the winter to 8-12 inches.

As an added bonus, once you begin growing blackberries, you will have them forever!

fresh blackberries, raspberries, blueberries and strawberries

Fresh Home Grown Berries

Growing Blackberries

Plant a few rooted shoots or plants in a prepared site.

Blackberries are adaptable to a wide variety of soils.

An acceptable pH range for growing blackberries is 5.5 to 6.5.

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Watering and Fertilizing Growing Blackberries

Water them once or twice a week during dry periods.
Feed new plantings every 8-10 weeks with three ounces of 8-8-8 from early spring until fall.
Mature vines should be fertilized using five ounces per plant once in early spring and two more times during the summer months.

Harvesting Blackberries

Freshly Picked Ripe Blackberries

Pick the growing blackberries when the fruit changes color from red to purple.
Initially, just a few berries will ripen.
Soon you will have your hands full, picking every other day for a month!
Cut all plants back to the ground immediately after harvesting.
This practice eliminates most insect and disease problems that may crop up.
By the fall, plants will produce new fruiting canes for next year's production.

Raspberry and Blackberry Jam from the Garden

Best Blackberry Plant Varieties

Brazos

The semi-erect Brazos does not need another variety for cross pollination or to be grown on a trellis.

It grows with some stems sprawling and others upright.

Darrow

Darrow blackberry is an everbearing variety.

The plant is a vigorous grower which reaches 4-7 feet high.

When planted, it starts to bear during the regular midsummer season and continues until fall.

The blackberries are large and sweet and taste wonderful fresh, canned, or frozen.

Plant bushes 3 to 5 feet apart in full sun.

Growers in zones 4-9 have the best growing conditions for this bush type.

Black Satin

Black Satin is a thornless blackberry variety, so you can pick the juicy berries without getting a scratch.

The bush is hardy in zones 4-10.,p>The plant is even recommended for northern growers if you are careful about applying mulch for protection during the wintertime.

The plants are extremely vigorous, disease free, and grow 5-7 feet tall.

This type is a consistent heavy producer, producing 35-40 large, sweet berries from each thornless stem.

Plant bushes 3-5 feet apart where they will be exposed to full sun.

This type ripens in early August.

Blackberry Syrup Recipe

This delicious syrup should be made at the height of the season when the fruits are at their very best.

Blackberries are at their peak of freshness in June, July, and August.

Serve blackberry syrup over ice cream, vanilla pudding, custard, and rice or bread pudding.

Use as a flavoring for milk shakes and ice -cream sodas or make a refreshing drink using crushed ice and sparkling water.

The following recipe makes about 1 pint, and can be doubled or triples with equally tasty results.

Ingredients:

4 cups fresh, ripe blackberries

1 cup water

2 cups sugar

Directions:

Wash, drain, hull berries. Place in a saucepan with 1 cup of water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer exactly 10 minutes. The fresh flavor depends on minimal cooking.
Strain off all the juice from the fruit using a jelly strainer bag. For proper straining, allow juice to drip into the waiting bowl gradually.
Measure the juice into a saucepan and discard the pulp. Add 1 cup of sugar for each cup of juice. Cook over moderate heat, stirring until the sugar has dissolved, and the syrup comes to a boil. Boil exactly two minutes. Remove from heat and skim off the froth.
Pour the hot syrup into hot, sterilized jars, allowing ½ inch headroom at the top, and seal.