Maintaining Yearly Maintenance on Thornless Blackberry Beds

Thornless Blackberry

Around any homestead, a blackberry bush is a well productive plant that is great for most regions. The thornless blackberry varieties provide exceptional flavor profiles, large blackberries, and much easier to harvest due to no thorns on the plants. Another benefit of having blackberries around the homestead is the many different health benefits they can provide.

Maintenance on Thornless Blackberry Beds

On this week's episode, Travis is demonstrating how to maintain yearly maintenance on thornless blackberry beds. About a month ago, the thornless blackberries stopped producing and so now it is time to clean the bed area. Travis is not quite sure what thornless variety of blackberries he currently has, but it does produce heavy yields and requires a little bit more maintenance. The first step Travis is going to do is trim them back to about knee-high because they will grow fast in the garden bed. Next, when it comes to pruning blackberries you do not have to be as particular as you would pruning a fruit tree. However, Travis suggests cutting them at the lateral limb just below that limb to ensure he provides some room for growth to help it continue photosynthesizing. You can also trellis the thornless blackberries but you still have to trim them back every year. Since Travis has small beds, instead of trellising he just prefers to prune them back which works just fine. The second step is to add mulch such as wheat straw around the plants and rake it in. He is going to lay a thick layer of the wheat straw to provide a nice structure and keep it maintained inside the thornless blackberry beds. After the wheat straw is laid all we have to do is water the plants in the bed. We don't have to worry about controlling weeds due to the wheat straw in the bed that helps control it for us. Overall, the thornless blackberry beds are pretty much maintenance-free with the exception of coming in the bed to add a new layer of wheat straw about once a year. Then, when it is time for harvesting blackberries the best time is in early spring when they start producing.