40+years of blackberries

[hobie]

I love this sort of project. I have been working on my own, though with just a weed wacker, and hand tools. I've been having a lot of tractor fantasies! I hope you will keep us posted with more pics. I'd like to see what it looks like next spring. As for the blackberries, I am working on my folks old property, which I now share use of with 4 brothers. Two brothers like my cleanup, and two complain about not having it more "natural", and missing the berries. They are almost never there to eat the berries, and there are very few compared to the number of huge canes. I got tired of getting scratched/cut by the thorns when mowing, or just walking by, and decided to do away with them. My view, is that if you want to eat berries, plant a patch, and tend it! Thanks, Brian

 

[CompactTractorFan]

Did you burn the base of the tree on the left?

 

[Sackett2]

Did you burn the base of the tree on the left?

nope, just weather/time/crud????

 

[bigballer]

nice project, removing these weeds makes a world of difference and recovering the land is such a great reward. when i bought my place here in WA 5 years ago, 4 of the 6 acres had "gone wild" and blackberries covered most it. i'm guessing most of them had about 10 years of freedom to propogate. they had grown up 10-15 feet around all the trees and some of the vines stretched 20-30 ft up into the cedars. as i slowly started to reclaim the land, during the process i uncovered several bags of trash, lots of old fencing with barbed wire bundles, stumps, fallen trees, and even some old tires. took me 2 summers to get get to the edges of the property and could not have done it without my tractor, brushhog, and hedge trimmer. i did whatever it took to get rid of them, eventually grass started growning in their place and i found as long as i kept it mowed they didn't return.. i'm not done, though, just this summer i knocked down some on the hill behind the house that have been in my sights for a long time!

 

[Sackett2]

nice project, removing these weeds makes a world of difference and recovering the land is such a great reward. when i bought my place here in WA 5 years ago, 4 of the 6 acres had "gone wild" and blackberries covered most it. i'm guessing most of them had about 10 years of freedom to propogate. they had grown up 10-15 feet around all the trees and some of the vines stretched 20-30 ft up into the cedars. as i slowly started to reclaim the land, during the process i uncovered several bags of trash, lots of old fencing with barbed wire bundles, stumps, fallen trees, and even some old tires. took me 2 summers to get get to the edges of the property and could not have done it without my tractor, brushhog, and hedge trimmer. i did whatever it took to get rid of them, eventually grass started growning in their place and i found as long as i kept it mowed they didn't return.. i'm not done, though, just this summer i knocked down some on the hill behind the house that have been in my sights for a long time!

nice job! I like having a tooth bar on for blackberries; If I can't mow it then I push the bucket down into them and pull them out.

 

[crazyal]

When I cleared the lot for my house within a year we started getting blackberries. At first it was great, pies and jam galore. Then we started getting visitors, Black bears, and the bushes started getting too big and saplings now are over 10 feet tall growing in the middle. So it's time to take as stroll with the dozer and reclaim the land again.

BTW that looks great what you did there. Once it fills in with grass it wont be long before people will forget that it wasn't always like that.