fruit
Blackberry & raspberry
Wild blackberries are already on your fencerows. Tame a row and you have jam forever.
Fastest perennial fruit here. Jam is winter happiness.
- When to sow
- Plant canes in March. Wild ones: cut a sunny fencerow to waist height and stop spraying it.
- Spacing
- 3 ft in a 4-ft-wide row on wire.
- Days
- Floricanes fruit the second year.
- Harvest
- June raspberries, July blackberries. Pick every other day. Color-black and dull, not shiny, for blackberries.
- Store
- Jam (water-bath), leather, or dry. They do not cellar.
- Save seed
- Tip-layer blackberries in August. Dig the new plant in March.
- Companions
- A grassy alley you can mow. They will escape — that’s fine if you want a thicket.
- Pests
- Japanese beetles in July — knock into soapy water at dawn. Birds — share or net.
- Multiflora rose hips are a backup jam if the blackberries fail. Strain the hairs.