I'd like to have some garden Blackberries,but am concerned about their proliferation. Can anyone recommend a variety for North Vancouver, if possible thornless! Many thanks, Ellis
There is a thornless variety for sale at Home Depot in South Surrey for $9 - I'm not sure how prolific they are, but I think they are like raspberries. Just remove the old canes every other year.
Be VERY careful what you buy from home depot! They seem to end up with an odd assortment of plants, very little plant knowledge, and, especially with end of summer sales, they're often more expensive than the nursery anyway. A few years ago I bought a "black raspberry" from home depot. The canes took right off, and quickly looked suspiciously like blackberry canes. It looked so aggressive that we pulled it out - no easy task, even less than a year old - before it fruited. I'd have a hard time trusting anything called a blackberry. Maybe planted first on a trial basis in a container? I'm lucky to live in an area where there are plenty of blackberry lined trails, so I can keep the vines out of my yard :)
Yes, it's probably best to grow any kind of blackberry in a controlled environment- you can even install barriers in a bed if you want to plant them in the ground; at least it won't take over. I find even raspberries to be somewhat invasive, and I wish I had put them in a controlled patch. But wf1992 is right, the wild berries taste the best anyway.
We have a major problem here with blackberries. They are a noxious weed and grow canes as thick as your thumb. They are nice if you can keep them against a fence and prune (Think they were British imports with first fleet in 1788) every year but give them half an inch and they take 40 miles. Our problem is birds distributing the seed. Having said that I did find a thing called American blackberry. Nice big black fruit and civilized thorns not hooks. I also grew Logan berries they were also quiet acheivers. Rasberries had a tendancy to nick off so got the goats to civilize them then re planted with root barriers. Much better now. Liz
I have 2 types of Thornless blackberries in my garden. Chester and Triple Crown. My favorite is the Triple Crown. The berries are very large, sweet and juicy. Mine have been in the ground for 3 years and so far I don't have any suckers coming up anywhere. I live in Creston and found Triple Crown at my local garden centre so you should be able to find them somewhere in BC. Leona
It seems that, almost, everyone has warned you about how invasive they can be. Why not try Loganberry, its a relative, and produces quite well here on the coast. Treated much like growing raspberries it is easily controlled and tastes much the same as Blackberry. Mine are thornless, which is a blessing, and produce well.