A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Food Garden Forum Question about blackberry plants....

I just bought two new blackberry plants this year. They are the bush type and thorn-less. I know they are supposed to not produce much if any this year, but they were approximately 1 foot tall when I bought & planted them a couple of weeks ago. They haven't shown any new growth yet but today I noticed they have flower buds all over them and are starting to bloom. I'm wondering, should I cut off those blooms to make it grow some more this year or should I just leave them alone?

Cheesey, dont cut any flowerbuds off just let them grow. Keep the ground moist and tie the branches up so you can pick the berry's better. After they have fruited you can cut the branch since it wont produce again. I live in AZ and have Boysen and Raspberry's. New growth will come from the bottom.Hope that helps.

They say that you should not pick the fruit the first year, but I have harvested some the first year. It usually works out ok. Be sure to weed the plants well, and a heavy mulching works well too. It will hold the moisture in during the heat of summer and keep weeds from choking the plants.

I did not have bush berries, so I had to look up the care for your type.

Here is some of waht I found in my research:
Blackberry bushes grow fast. Some can produce 40-foot canes. Blackberries need well-drained, fertile soil and a pH level of 5.5 to 6.5. Amend the soil if necessary. Plant your blackberry bushes in full sun to partial shade for best berry production.

Trellis trailing blackberry bushes on 12-gauge wire strung between wood or metal posts spaced 20 feet apart. Place the top wire 5 feet from the ground and the second wire 18 inches below it. Spiral the canes up the post and along the wires.

Lay 2 inches of mulch around bushes to prevent weeds. Use bark nuggets on slopes and hillsides to keep mulch from washing away. Mound mulch around trailing blackberries after the bush goes dormant to protect from harsh winters.
(I used well dried grass under mine, it is cheap & works well.)

Give blackberry bushes 1 inch of water at each watering during the growing season. Give them extra water during high winds and heat waves. Avoid fruit rot by watering close to the roots.


Spread a 10-20-20 fertilizer 1 foot away from the roots in a shallow trench that's 3 to 4 inches deep. Blackberry bushes have shallow roots and may burn if fertilizer is applied to close to roots. Follow package directions closely.


Prune bushes to clear dead wood and promote blooms. In late fall, cut all dead floricanes--(the canes that produced the berries)--to the ground. Don't prune the new growth--the primocanes--as they will produce the following year. In early spring, before the bush leafs out, cut back new berry-producing floricanes to 18 inches. In the summer, trim 2 inches off developing primocanes when they reach 3 to 4 feet tall to promote new growth

Okay, I didn't cut any away. I have just left them alone. I'm actually growing them in large pots though. It is really hard to plant stuff in the ground around here because of the soil conditions. I did have mulch of pine needles in the pots of the blackberries as well as some flower bulbs I planted but my darn lawn guys must have thought the pine needles weren't supposed to be there and cleaned them all out this morning! Lol....guess I need to find some mulch that doesn't look like yard debris.

Don't touch the flowers if I were you. My blackberry bushes took a couple of years to really get going. You will need to cut back your bush every year otherwise you may find that your bush will become large, straggly and unruly.

yea well probably or you could go out & tell the lawnguys to leave the post alone that you will care for them