hey everyone Andrew here at the Howard Homestead today I'm going to work on pruning our blackberry
bushes now you want to do this because you want to remove old growth that's dead now you can check
for diseases you want to open the plants up a little bit more for more sunlight and air to
get through for better fruiting and also pruning helps contain a kind of a wild Blackberry patch
that's gotten maybe out of control so when you are pruning a couple things you want obviously a good
set of pruners these are the okatsune pruners that I got from Stark Brothers and if you have
Thorn blackberries you want to get a nice pair of gloves these do these are a thornless variety so
don't have to worry about that right now so when it comes to printing the blackberries there's
two things to think about the first is that the blackberries have two different cane systems the
primocane comes up the first year and grows and then traditionally the Flor canes are the second
year growth of that primocane and they are the ones that fruit more now this is a ever bearing
variety of blackberries in the prime Arc family what's nice about this is that they do fruit on
the primocane so and traditionally in most first year growth they do fruit at the very end of the
tips of the canes which is really nice so with that being said last year the the canes that were
Flora canes died off we cut them off in the winter time they were dead cut them off got them out of
there but now I need to do a little additional pruning on last year's primocane now this year's
floor canes will be fruiting more so the the canes that I'll be cutting back there's on them
will have the the main canes that'll be cutting back and then also the lateral so the laterals
on the branches that go out and where you'll get most of your fruit on your floor canes so to get
started a couple things I want to think about too is when to do this you want to do this late winter
it has been an exceptionally warm winter here in Missouri this year so stuff's already starting to
Bud a little bit it is the first of March and also for each kind of root system I want four
to six canes per root system and then I want to cut the laterals back to about 6 16 inches
now some things I'll be looking for obviously bad branches broken dead I'll be looking for diseases
I'll be looking for branches that are maybe growing like low to the ground because that's
not really going to be helpful because they're going to be getting into the soil branches that
are crossing too much I'll probably trim some of them out and then I need to look at branches like
this one I've already trimmed back that I need to probably trellis back up to get them more
upright so it's starting at the base of this one I've only got really three canes coming out of
it so I don't have to really trim anything at the bottom but I like to do on the last year's
primocanes that fruited I'm going to cut it back below where where they fruit it a little bit so
that way there's no new buds on this it kind of the end kind of died off anyways now when
you're cutting Blackberry branches what you want to do is make sure you dispose of these properly
if you live out in the country like we do we can burn it it's a great way of doing it that's not
the case for you dispose of it get it off the property as best you can if your trash pickup
does a green pickup that's a great way to get rid of them so I'm going to make a pile of them I'm
going to get rid of them after we're done here to day so looking at the other canes here this big
long one I probably should have tipped it back late summer last year but since it got pretty
long a little bit damaged on this end I'm going to cut it back to about five feet tall here make sure
I leave enough enough buds on it so I'll cut it back there and then as I look through this this
one here was kind of outside my my trellis system I'm going to tip it back just a little bit here
let that go and then as I move down the Plant any of these kind of brown areas I'm going to trim
that back just a little bit more anything I feel like is damaged that's from a different different
Blackberry there so go ahead and cut back these tops a little bit help encourage more lateral
growth and just keep the plant looking nice the thing you want to really think about when doing
this is take your time look at the plants as you go again about four to six canes per blackberry
bush you kind of cut your main canes back to about four to six feet and your laterals in
about 16 inches or so and what that's going to do is going to continue to help get more growth more
fruiting and more delicious tasty blackberries if you want to get your own blackberry plants or
learn more tips and tricks on how to grow your own blackberries you can head over to starkbros.com