I welded pieces of steel angle to make more trellis supports. These are nice and strong and don’t look bad either. Next, I dug up 2 bushes that weren’t in an ideal location.  I was pleased to see  that were easily separated in to multiple plants.  So now I have 6 more blackberry bushes along the eastern fence of the font garden.

The way plants work is amazing to me! I realized our oak tree is growing roots all the way to the raised beds. The oak tree is 12 ft from the driveway. The driveway is 16 ft wide and its roots are growing all the way across. I was able to pull one of the roots up and it was 14 ft long and running just below the surface under the wood chips. I think I found tree roots in every hole I dug!

Of the 3 new blackberry plants I added in February, 2 lived and were growing very large and in an uncontrolled way. I’ve been stepping around them (and on them) enough to finally encourage me to build a trellis for them. They are planted near the entrance gate of my garden, so this was becoming a big problem for me.

This is probably the 4th iteration of different blackberry trellis solutions I’ve tried out in my garden. This one uses metal brackets to hold a stiff wire 6 inches away from the fence line.

Almost 10 years ago, I planted 16 different blackberry bushes, all in a big row. Adding a trellis wires like in this Texas AgriLife publication is the typical method of raising blackberries, and similar to what I did. But the long trellis wire became an obstacle and proved hard to use and I wound up removing them. The layout of where I had all this located wasn’t ideal for the trellis and it was constantly in the way of other things.