The winter before last, I cut all the blackberry canes nearly to the ground in the misguided understanding that they would recover in time to produce the following summer. They didn’t. In retrospect, I should only have cut the canes which had borne fruit that year and left the prima canes, the ones which sprang up for the first time that year, but did not bear. Blackberries have fruit on second-year canes.
Cut to this year. Since I cut everything down, everything that grew up this year is a lovely, fruit-bearing, second-year stunner, and they are thickly covered in berries, just now beginning to ripen.
Following the Pessimist’s Rule of Gardening, that can only mean that one or more of the following is about to happen:
1. Another 100-mph derecho will tear through our town, wisking away the entire bramble patch.
2. A tornado will uproot the whole thing, relocating it to the home of someone who doesn’t like fruit with tiny seeds.
3. Some heretofore unknown fungal disease will attack and cause all the fruit to rot just before it ripens.
4. A flock of birds or a swarm of insects will descend, roaring away with all my hopeful cobbler-filled dreams.
5. Thanks to global warming, some new species will have migrated from the south, irritable and hungry for berries. (Which reminds me, Arkansas, do you want your armadillos back? Because they’re just creepy).
6. While I’m not looking, my tinies will put on the thorn-proof suits they have secretly made just for this purpose, pluck all the berries, and feed them to the fattest, most spoilt chickens in the western hemisphere.
Just so I’m prepared.
I’m not even going to get started on the blueberries we’re not going to get to eat.
That blackberry looks so delicious!! I know just what you mean. We got one head of broccoli before the plants bit the dust. Now I’m holding my breath for the tomatoes we really want to get to eat. Gardening is tough.
mmmmmmm blackberries. I’m anxiously awaiting the ripening in my own bush, they look just like yours right now!
can ya throw some bird netting over them?? Or some more cheese cloth? Keep them watered or they will dry up into rock-berries that will not be delicious at all. And just for the record, I prefer blue berries any day. Why? No thorns !!
gosh! that’s gigantic! what do you have in your soil there??? can taste it now! thanks for sharing, it’s just beautiful!
Congrats on your healthy blackberry bushes. I’m am very familiar with the pessimistic approach to gardening. Here’s the list that actually did get my garden last year: late frost followed by triple digits, high winds and wildfires, gophers, rabbits, chickens, and mice.
This year all is going well except hubby sprayed some grass that was invading, and a big gust of wind carried some to the cukes, killing a few of those. Then some beetles devoured two potatoes in one day. And now it looks like my organic fertilizer is burning some tomatoes. GRRRR.
But good luck with yours. Hope it fares better than mine!
your blackberry patch looks great and i am sure you will get plenty of fine fruit off it. I have two new blackberry bushes so i was pleased to find out early that I shouldn’t cut them back this year…i am hoping to get some more before the year is out to put at the top of my plot…..I can’t believe you already have a ripe one..we still have flowers on most of ours…will keep my fingers crossed you get all your fruit!!
Watch out for the dog too!! My black lab just about cleaned me out of blackberries, strawberries, and tomatoes one year. She had a nose for when the were perfectly ripe. I’d be ready to pick them, and go outside to find she had gotten to them first!
It seems this year we won’t need a bird net for the blueberries. The martins that nesting in the box near them are keeping everything chased off. Also, try raspberries – 3 years now and nothing ever bothers them.
Ooh, yum! I have fond memories of going blackberry picking with my sisters across the neighbours farm land. Delicious!
If your weather resembles ours, I’m forecasting the fungal invasion.
As for the armadillos, have you tried whacking them with a broom? I’ve been outside in my pajamas at midnight, flailing away at one in a frenzied game of whack-a-dillo, trying to get him to stop digging up my lantana in search of the grubs below.
Actually, I’m not sure it really helped, but whacking is so cathartic, you know?
Your blackberries look amazing. I wish they weren’t such a pest plant here in the NW – I can’t get rid of all the volunteers in my yard! They strangle everything else. Hopefully yours stay in their patch where they belong and don’t wander too much. Freeze the extras that you can’t eat? 🙂 Enjoy!
Plan for the worst! That way you’re never disappointed and you’re often pleasantly surprised. My own baby blackberry bed was trampled into oblivion by my chihuahua taunting the german shepards next door. Guess I’ll need to raise my bed higher and try again! Good luck!
andrea–That has got to be the cutest way possible for blackberry bushes to bite the dust.
Joy K.–I want to play whack-a-dillo now.
Lindsay–I’m almost speechless. I’d be getting ready for the locusts and the frogs. Bless you.
JavaLady–I think it’s the thorns that’s keeping the birds at bay!
Barbara–We need a support group.
Oh TL, you are sooo funny! That looks delicious.
I am with you on the natural disasters… we still are not completely tilled. I am ready to just how a spot that is not too wet and just stick the dang plants in the ground.