I bought some cheap thornless plants and will now see how they go, they have been planted in containers, I hope 40cm diameter containers are big enough for them.
I assume they will come out of dormancy soon and start growing vigorously.
As an experiment I am also trying to propagate wild blackberries via cuttings, they seem very slow to grow roots, however I will give them a few more weeks, it's been said that wild blackberries are better tasting then thornless ones & having a wild bramble growing in a big container would be interesting.
samanya,
Jul 29, 8:04am
I didn't have any luck with the thornless blackberries & ended up giving the plants away. However, I have a bountiful crop of raspberries each year, but they are in a walk in cage not pots. 40cm pots should be big enough initially & you could always transplant them later if you need to. Good luck & heaps of lovely yummy blackberries for summer.
lythande1,
Jul 29, 9:08am
Blackberries are a weed. Caution.
Raspberries, well they do spread too, but if they pop up in the lawn, mow them. They hate north of Waikato. you can try but they won't grow well up there, they like frosty winters.
oh_hunnihunni,
Jul 29, 9:44am
Weird.
Every autumn we kids got loaded up with billies and buckets and a picnic basket, and piled into the back of the biggest family car and driven out to the edges of the city, down dusty roads, to the blackberries. We'd get scratched to hell, we'd stuff our faces, be purple fingered and faced and sunburnt until lunch, then spend the afternoon getting more. We'd take all this bounty home split it up equally between families, and our Mums would bottle and make pies and jellies and jams until they were exhausted.
Weeds. Sure they are. We need more weeds like that.
samanya,
Jul 29, 10:31am
The other thing you have to be wary of now, is often the councils spray them.
oh_hunnihunni,
Jul 29, 12:04pm
Bastards.
Our lot are pulling out swan plants too now. On specious h&s grounds.
Bastards.
samanya,
Jul 29, 12:55pm
Hell, do swan plants grow wild in your 'hood? I have to nurture & coddle mine & some years the frosts wipe them out & I have to start again protecting them so they can get big enough to support the hungry little caterpillars that grow a cm per minute!
oh_hunnihunni,
Jul 29, 1:04pm
They grow wild in my garden. I have intimate friends among the flutterbye population. Speaking of which, I has a fascinating conversation with a very fat bumble this afternoon. It was telling me off for buying frilly petalled blue violas, because it couldn't work out where the throat was. I caught it ripping open the back of he flower, no wonder I haven't had any seed capsules set.
But we parted on friendly terms, on account of it had the fattest furriest bum I have ever seen up close.
Gorgeous thing.
samanya,
Jul 30, 5:33am
Lovely aren't they? Not much bee activity here yet in spite of having had some glorious days . dire weather to come, apparently, bugger it.
golgotha,
Jul 30, 6:17am
There's a long row of Swan plants in a park up the road where I live. The council have been trying to spray wild blackberries but I still see healthy plants growing here and there. The Blackberry bush where I got the cuttings is huge.
I'll try and post a photo of the thornless plants sometime soon.
samanya,
Jul 30, 6:46am
I'd be interested to see how they perform for you. I have a few plants of a hybrid berry, not sure if it's a boysenberry/blackberry cross, but it's called berry delicious & it certainly is. I brought a few suckers home from the family bach, where it thrived & no problems with birds scoffing them & yet it's not doing as well here. Never enough to freeze/preserve, so it's just snacks in the garden stuff.
eta. if you have no success with cuttings, I'm fairly sure (not 100%) that blackberries sucker as well.
starseeker,
Jul 30, 2:38pm
Wild blackberries grow from seed, especially if the seed has gone through the digestive system of a bird. So you find them growing in all sorts of odd places.
solarboy,
Jul 30, 4:37pm
That would explain why they popped up beside my driveway about 80 metres from the nearest roadside plants.
golgotha,
Aug 7, 3:25pm
I've been reading about what you said and you are right, most raspberries don't seem to be suitable for Auckland. So I will replace the raspberry I have (Tulameen) with another type of berry, I might even consider the first raspberry listed on this webpage:
LOL. I thought I had a good relationship with bumblebees after being a little afraid of them for so many years. You've taken it all to another level. :)
golgotha,
Dec 12, 8:29am
Just an update
I got hundreds of big boysenberries last month, they are nice & I'm quite happy to keep the plant, however I will be looking for a commercial variety as I suspect they may have the best flavor
The 'black Satin' blackberry has been replaced with a 'karaka' blackberry, it is very very thorny.
I did get a black raspberry & it is very slow growing, it grows at about 1/4 of the speed of the other plants, it's doing ok though
samanya,
Dec 13, 10:03am
I have a really good raspberry crop this year after hardly any last season - the year before that I chopped them down to almost ground level. ;0)
pig-gal,
Dec 13, 2:40pm
When I moved to this house there were raspberry bushes here. Not knowing anything about them i kept trimming them back all the time and getting pretty much no fruit. This year they were left alone and I am getting so much fruit. Filling a 1kg yogurt container every couple days.
jan2242,
Dec 15, 3:21am
Both of the thornless blackberry and my raspberries are planted in 1/2 44gallon drums. This will be the 3rd years and they are loaded in blossom. I sued drums that had rusted holes on the bottom, dug them part way into the soil and filled.
dbab,
Oct 16, 8:08am
They need to be cut back in the autumn. The brown canes are old growth which has fruited, so they can be cut off at ground level. Leave the green canes as they will provide fruit the next summer.
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