Blackberries seem to inspire debate wherever they go.
And why not? The pros and cons of growing blackberries in a home garden are so varied. Their taste is certainly unique in the fruit world, without the intense sweetness of a strawberry or the puckery sourness of a tart cherry. The fruit is large and abundant – but so are most cultivar’s thorns!
The blackberry propagates readily, expanding your fruit crop… and also expanding into your neighbors’ yards. The fruit size means fewer needed for a jar of jam, but the size of the seeds is such a bother.
In short, the blackberry is a fruit that gardeners either love or you hate. For me, even though the fruit isn’t at the top of my list, the production power and easy growing habit of the canes put it high on my “love” list. Even for gardeners in zone 4, the blackberry is worth adding to the garden!
Some types of blackberries are hardy to zone 4, but many nurseries – whether local nurseries or online / mail-order catalogs – will only rate blackberry canes to zones 5 or 6 in terms of cold-hardiness.
When choosing a blackberry cultivar, look for cold-hardiness of the crown (root), the canes, and the berries. To break that down:
Cold-hardiness of the blackberry crown: Some blackberry canes are cold-sensitive, and a heavy winter will kill off any above-ground growth. However, a cold-hardy crown will enable the canes to grow back the next year… as long as last year’s canes had a long enough growing season that the crown isn’t slowly starved to death by premature loss of its foliage.
Cold-hardiness of the blackberry cane: A cold-hardy crown is absolutely crucial to survival of your blackberry patch, but a step better is purchasing a variety with cold-hardy canes. The majority of blackberry cultivars (at least in my world) are floricane-types. This means that they fruit on canes that have survived one full year… including a full winter. If you can find a variety with cold-hardy canes, you have a great shot at getting a decent crop of fruit, even in zone 4!
Cold-hardiness of the blackberry fruit: No matter how tough your plant is, the blackberry fruit itself is going to be sensitive to frost. A light frost typically won’t badly damage a fruit (particularly if it is nearly ripe), but one heavy frost can wipe out an entire fall crop of blackberries. This is why it is incredibly important to do your research on whether to purchase floricane or primocane blackberry plants!
Blackberries come in both primocane and floricane-fruiting varities.
What does this mean?
A primocane blackberry fruits on new growth. The berries come ripe in late fall.
A floricane blackberry will fruit on second-year canes. The berries come ripe in summer.
Not sure which to choose? There are pros and cons to growing either primocane or floricane brambles, particularly when northern-zone winters are a concern (and for blackberries, cold temperatures are a very common survival issue).
Personally, I lean towards the primocane types, but that’s a personal preference. Early frosts in the fall will often decimate your crop, if you go with the primocane types… but if you get lucky, you get a double-crop as last year’s primos turn into this year’s floricanes, and then your fruit production is at full-steam. Gardening is a gamble, so choose the odds that lean in your favor!
Although the thorns of blackberry bushes are practically infamous, breeders have been working hard to create thornless varieties – and they have succeeded!
Multiple thornless varieties of blackberries have hit the market in recent years. I’ve tested out a few different types, and I do find that yes, they are genuinely prickle-free. However, I do generally find the fruit to be a little bit smaller than their thorny-cane counterparts. This isn’t the end of the world, but it’s something to be aware of, if fruit quality is more important to you that the inconvenience of the thorns.
(This is my experience only… it’s possible that there are giant-fruiting thornless varieties out there, and I just haven’t discovered them yet! The fruit size is typically still very respectable, but there is a clear size difference among the different canes.)
I only recently discovered the relatively new “Baby Cakes” dwarf blackberry cultivar, and I’m already hoping that more dwarf types get added to the market. These smaller canes are easier to care for (thornless!), easier to find space for (smaller!) and easier to winterize (cold-hardy!). How can you argue with that?
If you’re interested in learning more about these container-friendly blackberry canes, I have a whole article on the pros and cons of growing dwarf blackberries.
No, blackberries are NOT always black! There are white varieties on the market that are becoming much more readily available. Unfortunately, I usually only see these white blackberry types advertised to zones 5 and warmer. For many northern gardeners, this makes the variety a non-starter… however, my fingers are crossed that a more cold-hardy type of this unusual fruit will hit the market sooner or later.
Interested in growing more strange colors of fruit in your own garden? Check out my article on pink blueberries, blue bananas, and more unusual fruits to grow yourself.
Blackberry canes come in multiple shapes and sizes. Trailing canes are more common (at least in my area), but you certainly can find erect-type blackberry plants.
If you are looking for a blackberry that won’t crawl all over your lawn, I would suggest going with a dwarf variety, such as Bushel and Berry’s lovely new Baby Cakes dwarf blackberry bush. You can get this dwarf bramble from multiple nurseries, both online and at local greenhouses.
Depending on what type of blackberry cane you’ve purchased, you may not need to winterize at all. A truly hardy blackberry – like some of the wild floricane types I have growing around the edges of the property – gets through the winter just fine with no extra assistance.
However, one of the more delicate floricane-fruiting blackberries will probably need to be laid down and mulched over to ensure the freezing winter winds don’t destroy the cane before it gets a chance to fruit the next summer. Once spring has arrived again, you can free the canes.
Primocanes don’t really need winterizing, unless you are hoping to get a second summer crop from the same canes. In that case, you would have to winterize as you did with the floricanes. Otherwise… just mow the whole patch and wait for summer to send up brand new canes.
That’s up for debate, but I can tell you that in my experience, the largest fruit will NOT come from the dwarf blackberry canes or from the thornless varieties.
I think some of the other Prime varieties have giant fruit (or anyway, my Prime-Ark canes do). However, I most commonly see the Kiowa advertised as one of the biggest, and I don’t have one of those to compare.
Unfortunately, I don’t have the Kiowa simply because it is typically not rated for anything colder than zone 5. Northern growers may be able to figure out a microclimate-protected space to grow these giants, but for now, it’s off my list.
You bet they do. Blackberries are quite possibly the nastiest little thorny brambles that ever gave delicious berries. Given room to roam, most blackberry canes will grow wildly out of control – and the fruit production will drop, because all that energy that COULD be used for berries is instead being used to create more thorns to snag unwary gardeners with.
Pruning will also affect how early your berries ripen, and how heavy the fruit load is. Particularly for northern gardeners who have chosen to grow primocane-fruiting blackberries, make sure you know how your pruning methods affect the timing of your harvest!
Depending on what type of cane you have purchased, you may be able to prune out ALL blackberry canes at the end of the fruiting season, and let the patch start from scratch next spring. Please note that this only works if you have planted primocane blackberries; if your blackberry patch is made up of floricane brambles, mowing the area every fall will ensure that you never, ever harvest a single berry!
Nourse Farms has a great reference guide for pruning bramble berries. I highly recommend checking it out.
There are many, many places to find blackberry plants. You may do best talking to your local nursery, as they may be able to recommend cold-hardy varieties that do well in your zone.
For me, unfortunately, this doesn’t quite work; most of my physical garden shopping is done in a zone further south, so the blackberries I’ve picked up have done poorly once planted in my garden (sorry, Chester blackberries. I didn’t mean to kill you.).
If you are looking for online sources, check out my reviews for some of my favorite nurseries:
Indiana Berry (I have bought a lot of their blackberries. High marks!)
Jung Seed (Gotta be honest, I can’t remember if I bought blackberries or just raspberries, but either way, their canes are awesome)
Stark Bros (Never purchased their blackberries, but I’ve done very well with their plants on the whole)
Just as a disclaimer, I’m not affiliated with any of these companies in any way. I don’t get a fee for referring them. I just think they are awesome, and wanted to share their links.