Soft fruit
Blackberry
Rubus fruticosus
Timings for your region
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Never sown — bare-root plants go straight into the bed.
The harvest times are for an established plant — the first crop comes after 2 years.
Plantingmid October – late November
Harvestlate July – mid September
Practical tip
Take a thornless variety — on a plant that throws metre-long canes every year that is not comfort, it is the difference between picking and fighting. It still crops decently on an east or north wall.
Origin & history
Blackberry is not one species but a collective name: Rubus fruticosus gathers several hundred microspecies that set seed without fertilisation and therefore breed true — over four hundred are described for Germany alone. Nobody here ever bred from it seriously, because it stood in every hedge anyway; the garden varieties come from America and Scotland. “Navaho” came out of the University of Arkansas breeding programme and “Loch Ness” from the Scottish Crop Research Institute near Dundee, and neither reached the trade before the late 1980s.
Varieties
The thornless varieties differ mainly in habit and ripening time. “Navaho” grows upright, stops at a good two metres, carries small, very sweet fruit and is the choice for a narrow trellis. “Loch Ness” is semi-erect, has the largest berries and starts as early as late July. “Chester Thornless” trails furthest and needs the full width of the wires, but it is the hardiest of them and only ripens from late August into September. Buy certified stock from a nursery and do not dig a wild plant out of a hedge.
Care
It fruits on last year’s canes, and every job on the wires follows from that: run wires at 60, 110 and 160 centimetres, tie the fruiting canes to one side and the new ones coming up from the base to the other. That way you never cut into the wrong wood in autumn. After harvest the canes that have fruited are cut out at ground level and four to six strong new ones kept, the rest removed. In harsh areas you untie the young canes in November, lay them flat on the ground and cover them with leaves and brushwood.
What can go wrong
If single drupelets on a fruit stay red and hard in August while the rest turns black, the blackberry mite is sitting in the buds. The answer is tidiness: pick right through, take off every half-red and spoiled fruit, and cut the fruited canes out immediately after harvest, because that is where it overwinters. Cane blight shows as purple-brown blotches around the buds and canes that snap in spring — what helps there is generous tying with air between the canes and cutting affected ones out at the base. And keep the cane tips off the soil, or they root and turn a trellis into a thicket.
Harvest, storage & kitchen
Black does not mean ripe. A blackberry is only ready when it looks matt rather than glossy and comes away with its core under a light pull; picked shiny black, it tastes sour. Go through every two or three days and lay the fruit in a shallow layer, because heaped up they crush themselves within the hour. In the fridge they last a day, frozen flat on a tray a year. For jelly a food mill is worth it, since the pips otherwise get in the way, and a third of apple in with them makes it set reliably. From late September there is no point picking anyway: the last fruit stays watery and moulds fast.
All timings are guide values for the given climate, not a guarantee. Weather, aspect and variety all have a say.