Blackberry Bushes

Cottonhawk · Jul 5, 2008

I heard that some people add diesel. I use a product called 'Preference' as sticker. I think that any type of surfactant will increase the effectivity of CrossBow and Roundups.
I have turned acres of blackberry jungle into nice green meadow. I also have trails cut right through the middle of blackberry jungles. I use CrossBow to spot spray the new growth and CrossBow/Roundup mixture to keep the trails clean.

bontai_Joe · Jul 7, 2008

My mom has a patch of blackberries across the street from her home in NJ and we just pick 'em and eat 'em. I never knew they were something to get rid of..... never knew that they were that invasive.

war_eagle · Jul 7, 2008

Some folks I'm sure haven't seen Pacific NW blackberries and others haven't seen SE blackberries. There is no comparison, based on my one trip to the State of Washington. The NW blackberry vines are monsters by comparison more like Cherokee Rose than blackberry. Someone please post photos of both if you have them.

Bird · Jul 7, 2008

I wonder whether the NW blackberry vines appearing to be monsters might have been the result of different care taken of them and more rain (more water) rather than any other difference. I don't know; just wonder if that wouldn't account for the difference. I know the blackberries I picked in Oregon were from some big vines, but when I was a kid on the farm at Healdton, OK, we had a blackberry patch that received no care at all. We just picked berries every year. So the vines there were monsters alright.

I don't really have any comparison photos, but the blackberry photo below was when mine were blooming on April 16, 2002, and the second photo was after they finished producing, June 27, 2002. By the time the quit producing, some of the stalks would be 5 to 6 feet tall, but then I mowed them each year just as short as possible near the end of June. Of course both photos have my vegetable garden in the background and my pasture beyond that.

EX3200 · Jul 7, 2008

Bird said:
I wonder whether the NW blackberry vines appearing to be monsters might have been the result of different care taken of them and more rain (more water) rather than any other difference.

Our invasive blackberries out here are non-native - Himalayan I believe. They are super aggressive, invasive, and resilient. They will overtake bamboo. They will drag down small trees. And, as someone mentioned, they are a fire hazard. Generations of them grow over the dead stuff from prior years, which creates a bed of flammable dead brush hiding beneath the living plants.

Don't even get me started on Scotch Broom!

Bird · Jul 7, 2008

I know that there are multiple varieties of blackberry, just as there are with other fruits, so apparently the northwest may actually be another variety. The ones I had would have spread some if I'd allowed it, but I just kept the grass mowed up to the edge of the berry patch so that any new berry growth also got mowed.

I guess everyone knows that blackberries will grow new stalks each year that will produce the next year, then die. So if you don't either mow everything down, as I did, or prune out just the old growth each year, you'll soon have a lot of dead growth that could be a fire hazard, as mentioned above. If instead of mowing everything down each June after they quit producing, I had simply pruned out the old growth, then I would have had monstrous stalks well over 6' high, but selectively pruning was just more work than I wanted to do.

ore540 · Sep 24, 2008

So Dave, how are the berry vines doing? Did you come up with a way to get them?

Thought of your post this week when I was buying crossbow. My creek finally dried up for the fall and it's time to get after mine.

CurlyDave · Sep 25, 2008

ore540 said:
So Dave, how are the berry vines doing? Did you come up with a way to get them?...

After much agonizing, I bought a Stihl Kombi motor (KM 110 R) and a HL hedge trimmer attachment. I also got the string trimmer and the pole saw attachments.

The blackberries were cut down in no time at all.

Then I took it over to some buildings I own in town and trimmed a couple of overgrown hedges to about 8-9' in height. No real good way to do this except with the power hedge trimmer.

All in all I am very satisfied with this purchase.

The only thing that still gives me pause is the fact that the hedge trimmer looks like it is perfectly designed to both trim hedges and chop fingers off. I like the pole-type design because it keeps my fingers further from the action. Those gas-powered hedge trimmers that look like a mutant chain saw give me the willies.