Today, in many areas you can find a thorny bush with black, raspberry-like, fragrant blackberries . This useful plant with delicious berries was first discovered in America. Today there are many varieties and about 300 blackberry hybrids. All of them are divided into large groups, such as, for example, a blackberry sprout or coumarica, sundew or creeping blackberries, a semi-growing blackberry and many others.
Small blackberry flowers are white, the berries are green at first, and as they keep up their color changes from red to saturated black. Blackberry berries are quite large, some weigh from 7 to 12 grams.
Blackberry Growing
If you decide to plant this bush on your site, then you probably will be interested in the question of how to plant and grow a blackberry. First of all, it is important to consider the characteristics of the variety that you want to grow. So, koumunika in many respects is similar to a garden raspberry. It has excellent frost resistance, and reproduces by root offspring. Rosyanka is more productive, however, its cultivation is complicated by the fact that creeping shoots of this sort of blackberry are covered with powerful spines. But in polusteljuschejsja blackberry in general there are no thorns, but thus productivity at it or her below, than at the previous species. In addition, the winter hardiness of the latter two species is much lower than that of cuminaceae.
To get a good harvest of blackberries, you should properly place shrubs on the site. If you provide the blackberry garden correct landing and proper care, then it can grow in one place up to 15 years. This shrub is absolutely undemanding in care. Grow blackberries in sunny places, but in the shade it yields good harvests. However, the berries are beginning to ripen in such places a week later. This shrub is drought-resistant and can grow on any soils. The best yields are given by blackberries, grown on soils rich in humus.
How to plant a blackberry?
The optimal period for planting blackberry garden is early spring. During the summer, the plants will grow stronger and winter frosts will be easier to bear. Most often planted blackberries on the border of the site in a row about 1.5 meters from the fence. Approximately 3 weeks before planting, it is necessary to prepare the soil. To do this, in the pits for planting of about 40 cm3 sup3 size it is necessary to make compost or rotted manure, potassium sulfate and wood ash, all fertilizers must be mixed with the ground, poured and left in this form until the time of planting.
When planting, the seedlings must be filled with fertile soil. Do not forget to make sure that the root neck is 2-3 cm below the soil level. Pour each bush with water and cover the plantings with compost, sawdust or peat. After this, the seedlings must be cut, leaving 20-30 cm above the soil surface.
Care for Blackberry Garden
Care for the garden blackberry is a regular fertilizer bushes. In the first 3 years after planting, plants need only nitrogen fertilizers. In the following years in the spring it is necessary to fertilize plants with ammonium nitrate, and then loosen the soil and mulch a layer of about 5 cm. In autumn, it is necessary to fertilize planting with potassium sulfate and superphosphate. After that, the soil should be dug with pitchforks. Do not forget that all fertilizers need to be introduced only after a good watering of the bushes.
Almost all varieties of blackberries need a garter. Gardeners use several types of placement of blackberries on trellises. For example, with fan formations, young shoots are tied in one direction. The next year they will be ripe berries, and appeared
When forming by the weaving method, the fruiting stems are intertwined between the two upper rows of wire, and the young shoots are attached to the bottom.
In spring, blackberry shrubs need to perform forming pruning. It is necessary to remove sick, frozen, broken shoots, and unnecessarily long ones - to shorten. To increase the productivity of blackberries, you need to shorten all the tips of young shoots. With proper care, the blackberry will every year please you with useful and tasty berries.