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🫐 Blackberry

Soft Fruit Plants · growing reference

When to plant

In USDA zone 6, for example: Plant around Mar 4, while the stock is still dormant — bare-root wants to be in the ground before it leafs out.

Dates are the typical window for each zone's average frost dates — your own last frost can differ by a couple of weeks. Zone 10 and warmer is effectively frost-free: plant to the season, not the frost. Southern Hemisphere: shift six months.

Blackberry Types

• Erect · ~1.5 years · 5–10 lbs/plant — Navaho, Ouachita, Apache — thornless and self-supporting; the low-fuss choice.
• Semi-erect · ~1.5 years · 10–25 lbs/plant — Triple Crown, Chester — thornless, huge yields, but they want a wire.
• Trailing · ~1.5 years · 5–15 lbs/plant — Marion, boysenberry, loganberry, tayberry — best flavour of the lot, and a trellis is mandatory.
• Primocane · 240 days · 3–8 lbs/plant — Prime-Ark and kin — fruit on first-year canes, so you can mow the row flat each winter and pick that autumn.