How To Increase Your Berry Harvest!
It may sound a bit crazy but brambles are one of my favorite things to grow. I love the wildness of them and it takes me back to when I was little and would go foraging for blackberries with my grandpa.
In this post I will be speaking about cane berries only and this applies to all the different varieties. So first lets break down the anatomy of cane berries before we start talking about how to train berry canes for large harvests.
Which berry cane produces fruit?
Image from University of Minnesota Extension
The fruiting canes are the second year canes and these are called floricanes. These produce fruiting laterals which will produce fruit. Summer bearing berry varieties will produce fruit on these types of canes.
The first year canes, which start growing during spring, are called primocanes. Everbearing or fall bearing berries will fruit on the primocanes. In summer bearing varieties these canes will just grow and will only produce fruit the following year when they become floricanes.
Which berry varieties require pruning?
Berries which are summer bearing require pruning after fruiting is done on the floricanes. This can be done in late summer or fall. The floricanes will be pruned to ground level to make space for the primocanes which will become the following years floricanes.
Fall bearing varieties don’t require pruning and can simply be mowed down after fruiting is done in the late fall or very early in the spring time.
How to maximize your berry production on summer bearing berries?
The way to maximize berry production is to bend your floricanes canes at a 45 to 60 degree angle. This stimulates the canes to produce more lateral fruiting shoots which will lead to a larger berry harvest. If you have a small space you can further stimulate growth by doing a zig zag pattern. The cane will need to be tied down at various points to achieve this but the more turns it makes the more fruiting laterals it will produce.
This is a trick that I learned from a rosarian when I took a rose class back in 2018. It is a trick used to create rose sculptures with climbing roses or ramblers, often used in estate gardens in the UK. In case you are wondering what do roses and berries have in common that this would work for both the answer is simple. It’s genetics! Roses and berries are part of the same family Rosaceae and berries are part of the genus Rubus which contains all brambles. So if you would like more flowers on your climbing roses go ahead and do any of these as well.
Please excuse the following drawings, art is not my strong suit I’m much better with plants.
One of the most simple ways to increase berry production without a lot of work is to take each cane and tie it down to your trellis at a 45 degree angle. This method is great if you have a large space and trellis and countless berry canes that need tending.
For this method you also want to take your floricanes at an angle but the difference here is that you will keep weaving it around your trellis. This is the best way to increase your berry harvest in a small space without taking up a lot of space.
Here is a very poor drawing representation of the fruiting lateral canes that you would expect to see come Spring. The more turns the canes tend to have the more fruiting laterals you will see and the more berries you will be able to harvest in the summertime!
What are the draw backs to this method?
One of the biggest draw backs to this is how time consuming it is. At the end of the Fall for a 7 foot wide section ( the section shown in the YouTube video) it takes me about 3 hours to prune back the floricanes and train the new primocanes. That said this past year we also did harvest over 20 pounds of Ollalliberries from this small area so to me it is definitely worth the time that I spend pruning and training it. We were able to eat so many fresh, made lots of jam and still have a few of it pounds in our freezer.
Some other drawbacks can include breaking or harming the canes during training if you are not careful. This is one of the reasons why I’m so slow in doing this I’m always worried about breaking the canes (and it does happen on occasion) I also take the opportunity to inspect the canes for disease and damage as well.
Below is a video to show you the canes as well as how I weave and train the berry canes. If you have any questions just let me know.
