As a rule, just one blackberry plant in the garden provides enough fruit for snacking and creating delicious cakes. The yield can be increased even further with a suitable trellis.
How do I create a trellis for blackberries?
To build a trellis for blackberries, you need wooden or metal stakes, tension wire, raffia or fastening rings, a hammer and wire cutters. The stakes are driven into the ground and connected with wire at a distance of about 50 cm. The blackberry shoots are loosely attached to the wires.
Choose the right variety for the trellis
While wild blackberry roots can grow through a clearing or embankment very quickly and are then almost impossible to remove, cultivated blackberry varieties usually grow more moderately in a permanent location. However, there are also differences in growth form between varieties for the garden. Some varieties grow more upright and compact and do not require any significant care other than regular pruning of the harvested tendrils. Other varieties, on the other hand, form long tendrils up to four meters long, which you can use a trellis to determine the direction of growth.
Choose the ideal location
Blackberries should be planted in a partially shaded to full sun location in the garden that has deep, humus-rich soil. If you give the blackberry plants as sheltered and warm a place as possible to grow, they will thank you with a slightly earlier ripening of the sweet fruits. A trellis is therefore of maximum benefit if it offers the blackberry vines a clear space to grow at a distance of around one meter from a house wall that is heated by the sun. If the house wall itself is to be used as a climbing frame for blackberries with a wooden frame and some tension wires, you should plant the blackberry plants at least 40 centimeters away from the wall so that the blackberry roots are not too restricted.
Build your own trellis out of wood and wires
Since a blackberry trellis has to be re-tied and cared for every year due to the plants fruiting on two-year-old wood, you should build it yourself from the following materials:
- Stakes made of wood or metal
- tension wire
- Binding or fastening rings
- Hammer for driving in the stakes
- Wire cutters for cutting the pieces of wire
The stakes are rammed deep enough into the ground in a row to ensure sufficient stability, and transverse lines made of wire are stretched across them at a distance of around 50 centimeters from each other. The growing shoots of the blackberries are regularly attached to these so that a loose arrangement results.
Tips & Tricks
If blackberries grow in a protected position under a protruding balcony, the tendrils can also be easily shaped with wires or cords stretched upwards.
