Prepare Blackberry Bushes For Winter: Overwinter Blackberries :- Regardless of the zone in which you grow, it’s time to get your blackberry bushes ready for winter and enter full fall garden clean-up mode. Watch as Jenna Rich, an organic farmer, walks you through 8 simple measures to get your blackberry plants ready for winter.
Prepare Blackberry Bushes For Winter: Overwinter Blackberries
You’ve probably seen messy blackberry bushes before, maybe even on your own land, with their wild growth and scattered canes. This tall, unkempt, and occasionally extremely prickly member of the bramble family can be a pain to work with. But when given the right attention, including winterization, blackberries are a pleasure to cultivate and consume!
Step 1: Remove Fallen Fruit
This applies to all plants and trees bearing fruit. After all fruiting has finished, clean up your blackberries in preparation for winter. Pick up or compost any fallen, rotten, sick, or broken fruit debris.
No gardener wants pests and creatures like mice and yellowjackets to stick around, and fallen fruit does just that. Swarms of stinging insects will move in and stay around if there is enough dropped fruit, which can cause serious problems.
Step 2: Soil Test and Fertilize
When you perform your yearly pruning in the winter, you can fertilise your blackberries all at once. If not, it can be gradually spread out, saving the final feed for when you’re cleaning up.
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If you choose this course, you will perform one when your bushes first emerge in the spring, two during the growing season, and the final one in the early or late fall. To assist establish robust primocanes for next year, this is the final feed.
Best Fertilizers for Blackberry Bushes
When you perform your yearly pruning in the winter, you can fertilise your blackberries all at once. If not, it can be gradually spread out, saving the final feed for when you’re cleaning up.
If you choose this course, you will perform one when your bushes first emerge in the spring, two during the growing season, and the final one in the early or late fall. To assist establish robust primocanes for next year, this is the final feed.
Step 3: Control Those Weeds
Since blackberry plants have shallow roots, weeds will pose a serious threat to them. It’s imperative to include weeding in your winter preparation regimen, particularly if your bushes are young and just starting to grow. Reducing the amount of weeds by mulching your walks and applying compost after you’ve been cultivating your plants.
Step 4: Don’t Forget to Water!
Similar to other fruits, healthy, plump, and juicy fruits require weekly irrigations of one to two inches and up to four inches during fruiting.
But after fruiting is done, you still need to provide your plants proper care. To ensure that they have a hydrated and content winter, they should be irrigated until the ground freezes.
Step 5: Protect from Snow and Ice
With any luck, you’ve chosen blackberries that are appropriate for your growing zone. How you winterise your bushes will depend on the kind; some can withstand low temperatures without much protection or particular care, while others require a lot of care to withstand the cold.
Best Varieties for Cold Climates
Zone 4-hardy “Illini Hardy” is a very robust self-supporting shrub that bears fruit in May and June. The thornless variety “Chester” has big, mellow, late-season fruits. Zones 5-8 get good performance from this variety.
“Ebony King” thrives in zones 2-3, is largely thornless, and can provide big, extremely sour berries. Since they are late bloomers, spring frosts won’t harm any delicate blooms. This berry flavour works really well in baked goods.
Step 6: Mulch
For the most part, most blackberry bushes are rather resilient and can withstand temperatures ranging from 0° to 10°. However, choosing a cold-hardy cultivar is advised if you live in a region with severe winters and lows of 0°. The next most crucial thing you can do to get your berry bushes ready for winter is to mulch them.
Step 7: Prune
How to prune blackberries varies on the variety you are cultivating. While some need to be pruned while they are dormant, others should be pruned in the summer. Pruning will improve fruit quality and production while also making future harvests simpler.
In order to increase light penetration into the bush canopy and to get rid of old, weak, and broken canes, we prune. Both will result in more fruit being produced, bigger berries.
Erect Blackberries
The most hardy cultivars of blackberries are called erect varieties, and they may be cultivated successfully in most areas. The bush should be reduced to three major floricanes (second-year canes), spaced 10 inches apart, by dormant pruning. Cut lateral (side) canes to a length of 12 to 18 inches. Any lateral canes below your lowest trellis wire should be removed.
Semi-erect Blackberries
This kind of shrub bears fruit later in the summer and may continue to do so into the fall, thus pruning may need to wait until later in the year. Similar to erect types, these also benefit from the previously mentioned summer tipping and winter pruning.
Trailing Blackberries
Unlike other blackberry kinds, trailing variants cannot support themselves and do not grow stiff canes. They trail along the ground, therefore their name, because they lack trellising to aid in their vertical growth.
Because they are the least cold-hardy blackberry variety and have an early fruiting season, trailing blackberries are planted in warmer climates.
Step 8: Protect from Critters
Not only are blackberries a delicious snack for people. It’s possible that deer, mice, voles, and birds will be drawn to your shrubs. The deer might consume the vegetation to the very last stub!
Key Takeaways
Pruning blackberry plants correctly is essential to their success. Primocanes are young plants that might not bear fruit in their first year of growth. Second-year canes known as floricanae yield fruit before withering away. In addition to providing support for fruit loads, trellising shields plants from inclement winter weather.
Final Thoughts
Although they have a poor reputation, blackberry bushes make wonderful additions to any garden with proper maintenance. Pruning, staking, mulching, and keeping pests away will help prepare them for the winter. Fruit-bearing shrubs that are healthy will have a lower chance of illness and pests. If you do it correctly, you’ll have an abundance of jam made from blackberries the next season.
