Clearing Black Berry Vines

[Tom_H]

When I've had to deal with them, I start with toothbar on FEL and brush hog running on back, let TB teeth rip vines away and brush hog takes material down more as rear passes over. Come back with sub-soiler to rip roots more. Spray with pre-emergent 2-3x in spring. Rototill in summer and fall. Spray with pre-emergent early following spring then seed several weeks later.

 

[john_bud]

Farwell,

Interesting, to say the least. That has never worked for me, only the spring time has been effective. Guess that old saying is right, more than one way to skin a cat!

jb

 

[Coyote]

I've found bushhogging them causes them to multiply! I have had success bushhogging first, then disking them in and spraying RU on after that. May take two disking/spraying. Then plant cover crop over it right away to help choke it out.

 

[slaveToHorses]

I am in the crossbow camp. Tried Roundup for years before the nursery men around me turned me on to crossbow. It is FAR better. I use roundup for the grasses and crossbow for the broadleaf weeds. Sometimes I mix the two together, when I am feeling nuclear.
The only way to deal with them is with chemicals first, otherwise you are just propogating them. The smallest living cutting will grow a new blackberry vine.

I also find the dry time to be best. They don't have the reserves to recouperate from the poison. Too bad.

 

[jeepinator]

Well, it's good to hear of others doing the chemical cocktail. I was a bit worried about possible mad scientist explosions or something the first few times... Crossbow, when mixed at the max recommended ratio, kills blackberry like viny stickery plants in dang near hours. I have seen leaves blacken in well under a day and be fully brown in under a week.
Roundup Pro seems to work as well, but it is slow, slow, painfully slow.
I have dispatched over an acre of some seriously hardcore blackberry patches. For me, spraying with Crossbow, waiting a week, and then tilling works very well. Regular weeds come right back, but so far the blackberries have not.

 

[plants4u]

Herbicide tank mixes work great, Round-up types and Crossbow for sure. We like to add a penetrant as well such as LI 700. Works anytime during the growing season, but a fall application will give a better root system kill since energies are being sent to the root system for the winter storage. Round-up types alone seem to only work at berry set in the PNW. BTW if you ever have a problem with horsetail, Brush killers that contain triclopyr (Crossbow) work great.

 

[John47]

I too have loads of Blackberry vines, I just reverse the brush hog into them. It's just a matter of keeping the new sprouting canes knocked back by mowing them often. They soon get exausted and die back! So far I haven't had to use any chemical treatment.
I DO ALWAYS carry a pocket knife and tweezers to pull thorns out of my tires though...
I've recovered a few acres back from BB's.

 

[bigballer]

The property I bought last year in western WA had about 3 acres covered in BB, some of the vines were 40-50ft long and moved their way up into the alders and cedars. I didn't have a tractor at the time so I rented one with a brushog and started mowing them down, in places they were 12 feet high so I went in forward with the loader bucket up high and dropped it down on top of them so I could get over them with the mower. This spring I wanted to recover some more of the trees so I bought a 30" double sided Stihl hedge trimmer (awesome peice of equipment). 10 - 20 stalks grow out of one rootball so I would cut them off at the ground and then pull the vines out of the trees. I left a bunch that cover the fenceline along the forest so since buying a tractor this summer I plan to add a toothbar to help "pull" them off the fenceline then I'll run along side the fence with the bushhog to cut them up. I still have along way to go before they are all gone and still need to rake the debris, I don't want to disturb the ground too much so I think a landscape rake will pull them into piles nicely and then I can move them to the burn pile. Would be nice to have a grapple to move them but can probably make do with the rake/toothbar. Where the rootballs are evident I'll dig them out with the toothbar, or maybe till the concentrated areas. Because they are in the horse pasture my wife forbids the use of chemicals so I have to go at them the "natural" way which just means more time on the tractor. I have another section behind the house covering the hillside. The plan is to terrace and landscape the area so next summer I'll just take them out with an excavator. They sure are nasty and I have had cuts all up and down my arms when dealing with them off the tractor. Funny thing is they always seem to get the last laugh. Best of Luck to anyone that has to deal with these monsters.

cheers,
bigballer

 

[LarryD]

bigballer,
If your pasture is fenced, just buy/borrow some goats and watch the action from the porch. They will spend the biggest part of the day just devouring the leaves. The plant tries to survive but new leaves are the first to go so after a while the whole thing just gives up. Leaves in one end and fertilizer out the other...works pretty good.

 

[Cottonhawk]

Crossbow plus surfactant for me works well to kill blackberries. I am in the process of clearing up several acres of land which used to be "old growth" blackberries with vines pointing at the sky like many anacondas. Right now all I can say is that I am in a full scale war to get rid of those blackberries and turn the land into meadow/pastures.