We have any Blackberry experts here (the plant and berry, not the phone-doohickey)?

[FTG-05]

I bush hog and spray wild blackberries all summer long, but I also raise thorn-less blackberries, 36 plants.

Mine are planted along a two wire fence I erected to keep them supported. I've tried a couple of varieties that claim they don't need the fence, but they never worked out for me, so I just tied them up along with the others.
[snip]

All told, I guess I spend about 20 hours a year working mine and picking the berries, so they aren't very labor intensive. I also test the soil every other year, but it never takes much lime or fertilizer to support them.

This is what I plan to do: A simple 1 or 2 wire barbed wire fence enough to support the blackberries. The good news is that the hill faces the north, which is what the TN.gov paper mentioned above recommends.

Thanks,

 

[Gunny]

This is what I plan to do: A simple 1 or 2 wire barbed wire fence enough to support the blackberries. The good news is that the hill faces the north, which is what the TN.gov paper mentioned above recommends.

I think they recommend that you plant them 4 feet apart in the row, but the first time I tried that, it didn't take long before they had grown and expanded so much that they crowded in towards each other so much that it was tough cleaning out the weeds and grass. This last time I planted them 6 feet apart which seems to be working better for me.

The wires on my fence are set at 3 feet and 5 feet from the ground, as the first year canes grow in length, you can weave them through the wires to keep them from touching the ground