Do you think this will work!?

digitS'

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Wild blackberries, huh?

In southern Oregon, we pulled them out of our upper pasture with the tractor and a chain. On the California coast, there was a creek along one side of our property. It was hand-to-hand combat to keep the vines out of our backyard. The creek disappeared into a blackberry jungle. I think there may have been a couple of rusting DeSoto's in there, too ;).

Now that I live 300 miles east of salt water and about 2 zones colder - there are some wild blackberry vines . . . here, and there. Maybe every few miles out in the country there will be a little 5 foot vine trailing along the ground. Bird probably carried a seed inland.

I commented on one to a neighbor the other day. A wild blackberry had shown up along his rock pile. He said he'd just noticed it there and had another volunteer vine "malingering" down in his fruit orchard. That was his choice of words.

The vines never make fruit :rolleyes: . . . at least, I never notice any worth bothering with. They are outside their natural environment here. I don't know if that would be true in Minnesota.

Blackberries do grow in some folks gardens altho' they have some trouble with the subzero weather. And, these are respectable creatures - no thorns!!

The Doyle variety is grown by one gardening friend. They make real nice berries. Maybe not quite the same as what I grew up with but at least they produce.

Steve
 

sparkles2307

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My idea is that if raspberries can produce and thrive in MN then a blackberry should be able to as well. For the first winter I plan to cover them with straw, since they wouldnt be too big yet. I wont be in WA till end of July, so there wouldnt really be any freshly rooted tips at that time. I dont know how they will do in this foregin environment, but I got the idea from a cmping trip last summer. We were only 45 min from our house and I saw dewberries growing in the woods! I didnt think anything nummy like that grew in MN. I will just bring back LOTS of cuttings to be able to absorb losses. And I wont tell DNR since they flip out about any non-native plant these days (they tried telling us we had to cut down our evergreen wind break because they are norway pines and not native to MN!) as a private property owner we still have the final say over DNR and the stuff we put on our land stays (so long as it isnt weed or something like that!)
 

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