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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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 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 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.
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.
4 cups fresh, ripe blackberries
1 cup water
2 cups sugar
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