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To cut or not to cut
Blues
Posts: 49
Now when it comes to pruning I'm usually wrong, but I'm hoping this time you can help me win a 50p bet. My wife planted a blackberry bush/shrub 3 years ago, a cutting from a huge cultivated thorn less variety from my mothers garden. To my way of thinking it's never done very well, possibly enough fruit this year to make a couple of pies. The difference of opinion comes from the fact there is a long stem (3Ft plus) that has never born fruit which I call a leader (am I right?) never mind that's not what the wager is about. The money question is do we or don't we cut this leader right back to nothing? Come on guys, its not so much the 50p stake that's worrying me its the fact that I shall never hear the end of it if I'm wrong.
0
Posts
To my mind you owe your wife 50p
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Blackberries fruit on canes produced the previous year so once a stem has fruited you can cut it right out. As new stems appear I bundle them loosely in a vertical column against their supports. Once the fruited stems are gone the new ones can then be released and trained out as a diagonally as possible to make a fan shape which encourages the formation of flowers and thus fruits.
Give them a good dose of bonemeal in autumn and a generous general fertiliser plus extra bonemeal in spring and keep them watered in dry spells. You should get much better crops.