Blackberry Removal

[Robert_Actual]

For those of you who have been to, or live in Western Washington you will know what I'm talking about. Blackberries are the state weed...


My wife and I purchased 5.6 acres and have about 2 acres that was cleared several years before we purchased it and the regrowth was 8' deep of blackberries when we purchased the land. They had grown over the top of limbs from logging, 2 old cars that had been dumped in the field, up the sides of Doug Fir trees, and right over the top of Scotch Broom (Washington State's runner up for a State weed). I need advice on how to get rid of these damn things - over the past 3 years of owning the land I have;

• Year 1: I have mowed & mulched the berries twice but this has done little more than slow them down as they can grow 8-10' a season. Once we get into the growing season and left unchecked, they will be knee deep by June, mid chest deep by July and will have huge 10' runners going skyward by late summer.
• Year 2 Spring: I hired goats which (due to the proximity to the stream and pond) seemed like a good idea. But like the mower they didn't get much of the roots and they actually cost quite a bit.
• Year 2 Early Fall: I had the area professionally brush raked. I hauled off over 50,000 lbs to the recycle center of blackberry bushes and root balls. I then sprayed remaining plants with CrossBow, let the area sit for a month and then had it hydroseeded with a meadow mix. Blackberries are back - not quite as bad but they're back just the same.
• Year 3: I hired a brush mowing company to mow monthly. This basically resulted in the berries sending out runners down in the grass that went back into the ground and created new root starts.
• Year 3.5: This winter I hired some day laborers to individually hack out all remaining blackberries and spray the area with crossbow. I will hydro seed again around the first of April when the risk of frost is gone.

Is there anything I'm missing? Our future home (currently under construction) will look out onto a large pond and meadow and I just want to see tall grass that is full of deer and a pond full of ducks - but after 3.5 years of screwing with it I've maybe only reduced the berries by 60-70%. Does anyone have a better way of dealing with these things?


In the next several weeks I will be taking delivery of a new tractor with multiple attachments. My hope is to stay on top of the berry growth more, but due to the soft ground in the area this will be difficult until mid summer.


Thanks in advance.

 

[Dougeye]

Glyphosate. And persistence. The smallest piece of live blackberry root is all it takes, so mechanical removal as best as possible and minimal spraying of what's left over and what pokes up next. It took us several years to eradicate the stuff from our property, and we are vigilant about any intrusions from the neighbours' sides of the fences. You can never be complacent.

Do you have English Ivy as well? That's the third one in our part of the world...

 

[Creamer]

Consistent mowing over a few years will take them out as they run out of root stores to keep growing. The problem is when you get to the edges as it is hard to consistently mow around edges especially if there are trees.

Full sun is the other thing - they are not a fan of full sun and the roots needs to be shaded - but once again are the edges where there are usually trees.

 

[Wagtail]

Blackberry is a 'weed' here in Tasmania and is recommended to be eliminated...

And yet Blackberry Jam is so yummy! So many folks pulled over on the side of a road picking berries.

 

[Frankenkubota]

Same in oregon. I did about 1 acre by hand. Really on hands and knees. Used a hand held pruner. They grow in either groups of 3 or 5 branches. Then crossbow. Then cut cut cut with the mower, it worked.

The only reason I comment is, on the morning walks there were tons of blackberries but as time went on the good ones were soon way out of reach.

Once in a while the elk would come by and they were not too worried about prickers! They would bull doze a channel into the blackberries which opened up all kinds of new berries.

Lots of purple spots on the car etc that time of Year!

 

[cqaigy2]

I just cut out the ones i don't want to grow in the areas i don't want them. Mow and or hand cut. They give up after while of that kind of treatment. Then the birds are pretty helpful with replanting.

 

[greenerdreams]

i had about an acre of blackberries that were maybe 10' tall. i mowed them with a hydraulic skidsteer brush mower then mowed weekly with a zero turn finish mower. never had to spray or do anything else, area looks like a normal lawn. mowing monthly is not often enough. crossbow is good but you need a sticker to make it work better if you want to go that route, i have used small amounts of diesel mixed in and it works well..

 

[cqaigy2]

I just mow the ones i don't want. Birds are going to replant for you so you don't have to worry about getting rid of them completely. Besides, if you cut them just right, you can't easily pick the berries when they get ripe. One of the yummiest of weeds.

 

[Cougsfan]

I grew up in Grays Harbor County Washington. Blackberries were everywhere. Both Himalayan and Evergreen varieties. Every August my siblings and I would have to pick blackberries all month long to earn enough money to buy our school clothes. After a while between between the scratches from the briars and the blackberry juice our hands would be tattooed a purple-ish blue for days. Our blue lips would tell our parents if we had been eating the profits.

I personally would prefer to never see another blackberry bush. Repeated mowing is probably the most effective removal method.

 

[Midniteoyl]

Yep. Mow, mow, and mow again.. I cant let more than 2 weeks go w/o mowing/hogging or all sorts of crap pops up.

 

[Handloader109]

goats. they love them. That and roses....

 

[Torvy]

I figure when life hands you blackberries, you make jam...or something. You may not get rich, but market it right and people in cities will pay well...just make sure to label it artisanal or at least wild, maybe free-range.

Blackberries should be able to be trained to a trellis. Ultimately, it may prove easier to bend with the wind than to run against it. Of course if that doesn't work, cut it low and often. Essentially, you will starve the roots. The battle will likely never end, bit it will get easier. I wish the thorny weeds on my land had the upside of berries.

 

[Midniteoyl]

just make sure to label it artisanal or at least wild,

Organic, non-GMO, all natural, wild grown, gluten free berries.

 

[Torvy]

See, but he already sprayed them so the organic police would sue. The opposite of organic is inorganic. Inorganic blackberries would be like those glass grapes from the 70s. All fruit is organic....sorry, just a pet peeve. I hate the term organic when what it really means is "grown without 'store-bought' chemicals.". If that is important to people, fine, but organic already had a meaning. Come up with a better word.

 

[Cougsfan]

See, but he already sprayed them so the organic police would sue. The opposite of organic is inorganic. Inorganic blackberries would be like those glass grapes from the 70s. All fruit is organic....sorry, just a pet peeve. I hate the term organic when what it really means is "grown without 'store-bought' chemicals.". If that is important to people, fine, but organic already had a meaning. Come up with a better word.

You will never make it as a marketing person, Torvy. You make too much sense.

 

[mark in portugal]

"Organic" farming allows store bought chemicals, you just have to use "organic" certified ones.

Like neem pesticide, made by stripping a slow growing tropical tree of its leaves, instead of nicotinoid made completely artificially, which will therefore kill bees.
Neem kills bees too, but it kills them organically, so that's ok.

I did actually use the stuff on my fruit and it works ok, but short shelf life once opened and extreme high price put me off.

 

[bcp]

Aren't crude oil and snake venoim organic, too?

Bruce

 

[goeduck]

I have cleared about 15 acres of Himalayan Blackberry, and some Evergreen. Nasty things, mostly the Himalayan. These are not trellising berries people from other areas think of. These are monsters. Canes nearly 2 inch at the base. Able to grow up into trees 2 stories high. Able to produce shoots reaching 30 feet in one year, tip-rooting where they hit the ground.

I am able to get them under control in the open areas where I can mow. I have not been able to get them under control along fences or around trees.

Crossbow in the fall (not the spring) when the berries are taking nutrients down to the root-balls helps.

Washington and Oregon have California to blame for these beasts. Too bad the guy did not quit after the Russet Potato.

The Strange, Twisted Story Behind Seattle's Blackberries

Those tangled brambles are everywhere in the city, the legacy of an eccentric named Luther Burbank whose breeding experiments with crops can still be found on many American dinner plates.

www.npr.org

 

[mark in portugal]

Aren't crude oil and snake venoim organic, too?

Bruce

Absolutely; asbestos, mercury, and uranium are completely natural too.

Back on topic for a moment.
It's easy to eliminate the blackberries if you also want to kill everything around them. Plow it, spray it, mow it.

But if you want to keep the trees or shrubs that they're strangling, then it's a LOT harder.
I have a fruit orchard, that's fairly easy to keep clear with periodic mowing + strimming. But out in a back field I have some fruit trees in the gullies and berms that get a lot less attention, and those are really tough.

I cut them at the base and pull them out with heavy leather welding gloves from time to time.
If possible, the root ball is just a few inches under a a quick hit with a digging hoe will extract it.

That fruit is all "organic", that is I don't spray or fertilize it.
Mostly that results in extra protein content (aka, bugs + worms).

 

[Sonny580]

Round-up and mow will take care of them in a flash! ---got nasty stuff around here too and blackberries + raspberries, mulberry seedlings, etc. --- old Roundup did the trick along with mowing.
Had a neighbor hired a small dozer with a root rake on it and cleaned his up. now he just spot sprays with Round-up.