As a rule, a blackberry plant in the garden already provides enough fruit for snacking and for creating delicious cakes. With a suitable trellis, the yield can be increased even more.

Choose the right variety for the trellis

While wild blackberry roots can grow through a clearing or embankment at breakneck speed and then can hardly be removed, cultivated blackberry varieties usually grow a little more moderately in a fixed location. However, there are also differences in the growth habit of the breeds for the garden. Some varieties grow more upright and compact and do not require any significant care other than regular pruning of the harvested tendrils. Other varieties, on the other hand, form long tendrils of up to four meters in length, which you can set the direction of growth with a trellis.

Choose the ideal location

Blackberries should be planted in a partially shaded to full sun spot in the garden that has deep, humus-rich soil. If you give the blackberry plants a place that is as protected and warm as possible to grow, they will thank you with a slightly earlier ripening time for the sweet fruits. A trellis is therefore of maximum benefit if it offers the blackberry tendrils a clear space to grow at a distance of about one meter from a house wall heated by the sun. If the house wall itself is to become a climbing frame for blackberries with a wooden scaffold and some tension wires, you should plant the blackberry plants at least 40 centimeters from the wall so that the blackberry roots are not too narrow.

Build the trellis yourself out of wood and wires

Since a blackberry trellis has to be reattached and cared for every year due to the plants that are fruiting on the two-year-old wood, you should build it yourself from the following materials:

  • pegs of wood or metal
  • tension wire
  • Binding bast or fastening rings
  • Hammer to hammer in the pegs
  • Wire cutters for cutting the pieces of wire

The pegs are rammed into the ground in a row deep enough to ensure sufficient stability, with transverse lines of wire stretched about 50 centimeters apart. The growing shoots of the blackberries are regularly attached to these in such a way that a loose arrangement results.

tips and tricks

If blackberries grow in a protected position under a protruding balcony, the tendrils can also be easily shaped with wires or strings stretched upwards.

Category:

Vegetable garden