In the gardens of summer residents you can find not only raspberries, strawberries or blueberries, but even blackberries. Not everyone knows how to care for this berry.
To collect a rich harvest of large berries, it is necessary to carry out pruning.
Anastasia Kovrizhnykh, an expert of the online publication "BelNovosti", a scientist, agronomist, landscape designer, told how to care for blackberries.
First stage
Regardless of the variety, blackberries, like raspberries, need to be trimmed from shoots that produced a harvest in the past season.
In upright and creeping varieties, old branches are brown or dark in color, sometimes with dry buds.
Young shoots are much lighter – light green or brown.
Second stage
After formative pruning comes sanitary pruning.
If there are cracks, swelling, or other defects on the bark of the shoots, they must be removed to the base.
You can't leave stumps, as they may start to rot.
Let's sum it up
After pruning the blackberry, 5-8 strong shoots up to 2 meters high should remain.
And don’t forget to shorten the side shoots to 60 cm.
Expert: Anastasia Kovrizhnykh
