Harvesting delicious berries fresh from your own garden is a pleasure for children and adults alike, which greatly increases the enjoyment of your own garden during the summer months. If raspberries and blackberries are grown, you should definitely think of a suitable climbing aid for the plants.
What does an effective climbing aid for berries look like?
A suitable climbing aid for berries such as raspberries and blackberries consists of stable support pillars and wires, rods or cords stretched between them. It allows for even sunlight access, improved ventilation, easier harvesting and easier distinction between old and new shoots.
A trellis prevents various problems
Raspberries and blackberries tend to grow rather creeping without appropriate care as soon as individual shoots reach a certain length. If, on the other hand, the plants are clearly guided along the wires or rods of a climbing aid, this has the following advantages:
- all parts of the plant are reached relatively evenly by sunlight
- Passages between individual plants or rows of plants are preserved
- improved ventilation prevents mildew and other diseases
- easier harvesting
- easier distinction between old and new shoots
A climbing aid can be made from different materials
There are very different types of trellises, but trellises for raspberries and blackberries usually consist of some type of support pillars and wires, rods or cords stretched or suspended between them. Sometimes three rows of wires are simply stretched between metal rods driven sufficiently deep into the ground. However, square timbers (€13.00 at Amazon) with drive-in sleeves offer more stability, on the sides of which the three rows of wire attached one above the other are attached twice at some distance using a spacer. This means that the raspberry or blackberry shoots can easily be trained in an upright growth direction in the middle between the two rows of wires. With a little creativity, climbing aids for berries can also be made from a variety of materials such as wooden slats, old iron bars from fences or particularly sturdy bamboo sticks.
Tip
If the shoots of raspberries or blackberries are fixed to a climbing aid at certain times with binding wire or other materials, they can later be distinguished from freshly grown shoots. This can be an important source of information for pruning of varieties that fruit on two-year-old shoots.
