Dealing with blackberry patches was the last thing I was going to do in my landscaping effort. So, what’s the problem with blackberry patches? Blackberry plants are like sadists – they want you to take their fruit, but they will cut you up when you try if you are not very, very careful.
We have plants that have spread all over the back garden. They just seem to pop up everywhere. That’s fine with me – I like the blackberries. Unfortunately, when they create a new patch, it is usually where a lot of weeds are growing. For example, see the patch below.
The white flowers belong to blackberry plants. Everything without a flower is a weed. Trying to get past the weeds to the blackberries can be a challenge.
So, I decided to “weed out” the patches very slowly and then, when I had gotten most of the weeds out, I laid plastic sheeting down and covered the sheeting with mulch. That will not stop the weeds altogether, but will help a great deal.
Here are a couple of pictures of completed patches. Note that on one I used leaves I sucked up with my lawnmower. I had run out of mulch and was too lazy to go to Home Depot to get a bag. Interestingly, the local recycling center, which normally has huge mounds of mulch made out of nicely chipped trees, has no mulch at all now. The website indicates that it is because of the stay-at-home orders.
We also have wild blackberries growing everywhere.
These tend to be much smaller than domesticated blackberries and taste kind of bitter. I will pluck them and eat them when I see ripe ones.
So, now I’m done, right?
Wrong. Every time I look around, I see more work that can be done. For example, we have one peach tree that, unfortunately, blooms in January. Way too early.
A few years back it produced so many peaches we got sick of them. These past two years, however, the tree bloomed but produced no peaches. It needs chilling hours, but our winters have been too warm. Anyway, the area is normally a messy section of weeds, one that I have to attend to. Like I said, you are never really done.
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