I admire your approach, John, and aspire to it somewhat. However, the
blackberries around here are a mite tougher than you describe. Not
come back from a bit of root? I find the stuff sending enormous
runners from the creek bank to sprout a new bush 20 feet into our
"lawn" (okay, mowed weeds). My compost pile built too near the iron
fence between us and the creek has become overgrown with brambles that
I've no idea how to get rid of. Not to mention all the weedy saplings
and other snags that keep the creek from running well when we get our
yearly flash floods. I think I need a scythe, or some other brush
cutter, although I'm not sure how to get it through the fence, and have
no other access to the creek bank. Hmmm. I think this is complicated
by our lack of killing frost most winters. The tough stuff like
blackberry just keep growing and growing with barely a fallow season.
Regards, Laurie
Mill Valley, CA
But John is actually right Laurie. Blackberry doesn't come back from root.
The problem is that those cutting back blackberries rarely actually get
down to the root but only to the node between root and stem. And it only
seems to take one cell surviving at that level for all the root energy to
be put into those giant runners you describe. However if you don't let the
new end touch down in your lawn then it can't root - it has to touch ground
to make roots at that point. Its not a scythe you need for brambles but
something like what we call a slash hook - has a shorter handle and a more
curved blade which gives a good chopping action. How deep is the creek -
sounds like wading up it is the best access to the brambles - that's what
we do. Believe me John is well used to the absence of a closed season for
brambles. My son dealt with a 300 foot incursion yesterday in a morning
with the slash hook. Today's task is to run it through the shredder and do
some mulching
kathryn
Do you shred blackberry brambles? What happens with the thorns? I
have to admit, I do like picking the very nice ripe berries when I can
get them.
Regards, Laurie
Mill Valley, CA
Laurie, take it from someone with winter frost that it doesn't help the least bit with blackberries!
Mine send out these small plants both fall and spring, but I dig them up as fast as they send them up. It is not that hard to dig up even huge plants...
Carol
If you have a wood stove you're not using right now, it is sort of fun to fill it up with dried blackberry cane (cut into lengths). When you get a cold rainy day light it, and WHOOSH!
Carol (My stove is full of some blackberry cane and loads of Rudbeckia stalks).
I normally shred into a large container - usually an old fish box since we
pick these up in quantity on the beach after storms and have a fine
collection - and then dump it as mulch wherever I want it. The thorns break
down along with everything else. No problem.
kathryn
It is a matter of tools mostly I suppose Laurie. A scythe would be a rather
weak and insufficient thing. A slashhook is something like a very heavy
sickle on a good three foot long handle. A good one will slice neatly
through a sapling as thick as my arm.
My Japanese chopper's metal part weighs over two kilos. It takes an
horizontal slice of the ground about a foot wide. The beauty of this
instrument is that you can make it skim over the surface without damaging
the soil but wherever it has been is bare earth left. I have other tools
that have combinations of horizontal and vertical cutting edges. Anyway in
the end it takes a bit of determined swinging. Not as hard as for driving a
golfball a hundred and fifty yards but more often and if possible with a
certain rhythm.
Your blackberries can not possibly be worse than ours if some here have
stems of close to an inch in diameter.
I suppose that the runners you describe are really stems? Ours move far and
fast as well and when these stems touch the ground they can indeed shoot
roots down and start a new plant. But really in massive old blackberry
growth the separate stools are a minimum 5 foot away from one another. It is
only necessary to take one swipe every five feet or so with the Japanese
chopper.
The main problem is that all these many stems are intertwined and form a
canopy sometimes more than head high. A few swipes with the slashhook and it
should be possible to see what one is doing. It is like unraveling a knitted
sweater, once you have got an end of the thread it is a simple business.
Even the fastest "runner" takes a few weeks to travel 20 feet and it can be
snipped off in less than a second.
I really like blackberries. They give a lot of very tasty jam and a good few
gallons of very potent wine every year. They also stay green in a mild
winter and are then invaluable as food for my goats. These will eat every
last leaf and all the end shoots and that slows a blackberry down a lot. So
I really try to balance things between goat food and jam and hand clearing
where necessary for other uses. I am not going to wage all out war on
something so useful. I thrives in West Cork and that is rare enough.
john
Laurie Mandigo-Stoba wrote:
> Do you shred blackberry brambles? What happens with the thorns? I
> have to admit, I do like picking the very nice ripe berries when I can
> get them.
I don't have any blackberries in my patch, but do regularly shred spent
raspberry canes which are somewhat prickly and lots of rose prunings as
well, which are much more so. I find that the prickles don't seem to be
any bother when spreading the shreddings, but I would hesitate to put
through holly with leaves on if I had any. I once weeded a border which
was dominated by a holly tree and found to my cost that the looong spiky
prickles seem to be almost totally resistant to decay!
Moira
--
Tony & Moira Ryan,
Wainuiomata, North Island, NZ. Pictures of our garden at:-
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/cherie1/Garden/TonyandMoira/index.htm
When I use dried blackberry brambles for restarting the fire, it take a handful rather loosely and the thorns don't hurt. I have lots of practise though!
Carol
