And some pix.
I think I have begun to develop a way to corral the rampant blackberry canes coming over, thru and under the 6’ chain link fence with wooden slots on the western side of my garden partially shaded by wild fruit trees in a rampant old thicket of blackberry canes, all straining to live in comparatively sunny garden. I’m working with twine and heavy gloves. I’ve sent it to Mother Earth News to see if they will print it. The berries are just coloring up and I hope to pluck a small sweet harvest while keeping the vines close along the fence but I’m mostly going for restraint of the invading hoards and lack of blood loss..
Half of the fence has an unused (too shady) wire grape trellis at 4 and 6’ high and 1” out from the fence and it was a handy support in that area for winding all the twisted cables of vines onto.
I pruned everything coming over, thru and under the fence last year so the berries are on year old, shorter canes and this year’s current canes are very different, they can only be considered as wild sun and territory grabbers, as obnoxiously as possible, eager to claim territory and they look like a spine leafed flood smashing into and thru the fence. In one area they reach out across the ground, and they also hover right over the tree kale and shade it even when the sun is in the east. They will carry the berries next year.
The thorns on leaf and stem are good for keeping the canes twisted together. I start each section by gathering one or two of the berry free young vines and pull them down and horizontally close along the fence in any available lower density. Then I take the next vine in the direction opposite to the assigned direction and pull it across to twine it a few turns around the first. I move down against the direction I am sending them until I have a thick cable of twisted vines. I move them under clumps of berries and pull the rest of the clumps out, so they rest on the vine cables and get more sun.
I’ve mostly only needed to use twine to tie the clumps close to the fence. I will admit that my primary energy went into placing them, not protecting them, and I broke and seriously bent many, twisting them in a cable and then pulling the cable down and working ropes of them pulled underneath the fruit bearing clumps. They will send out short stems and clusters and next year the young voracious vines can be twisted together and loosely tied to the fence above and below the flowering or fruiting vines coming off the previous cable of vines. I have no idea what kind of crop I’ll get, but any will be appreciated, and I can already see that the harvest can be a bit less painful.
