Upcoming changes...

This is the first year in the last four that I will not be purchasing any new vines to put into the ground, I suppose that is a good thing. I believe I've maximized what I can get out of the space that I am willing to put to the grape vines, now I'm ready to keep babying the vines that I have and enjoy a couple harvests. I have decided to uproot the climbing wire for the beans, remove the raised beds, and just use it as a tillable area. I can't find any advantage with the beds and therefore have chosen to remove them. The Black raspberry bush is also soon to be history, while it is a prolific grower, it doesn't put off nearly any berries, and the ones that it does produce, aren't really worth a shit anyway. The space that I've reclaimed from the massive blackberry bush will be used as additional blackberry growing area. The blackberries are doing quite nicely and have earned some expansion space in the garden. The blackberries produced are delicious.

Is anyone else buying any new vines out there?

Fruit Garden Pictures

4th year Niagara

Niagara

Blackberry Canes

More Blackberry

Concord Vine with new shoots

More Vines

Monster Black Raspberry Bush

More Raspberry

Blueberry Patch just mulched with last years leaves

Blueberry Bush

Blackberry Growing Information

I thought this was a pretty good resource for growing blackberries, it's based on North Carolina weather. 

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/hil/ag401.html

Blackberry Trellis Product

I WILL be engineering something similar to this product, I love the concept.

Blackberry Bush trellis for small spaces

The Blackberries

I have planted a total of 5 blackberry crowns in my garden. This is the 3rd year of growing. Four of the plants are triple crown blackberry and some kind of thorned trailing breed.

I got a good amount of berries last year, but nothing substantial. My expectation is that the upcoming 2011 harvest will be good, definitely better the previous. Starting this year, I pruned the canes using a method I read about called "tipping". It's nothing overly complicated, you simply cut the tips off of the blackberry canes when they reach a fairly desirable height for easy harvest, I choose roughly 5 feet before pruning. The plant results in shooting out the lateral canes at a much faster growth rate. The plant focuses it's energy on the side shoots, and not upwards growth. The single thorned trailing breed seems to be a less desirable variety of blackberry plant, I don't really know what to do with the damn thing. I just keep wrapping it over some wires on a trellis I built for the blackberry bush row.

In the Ohio weather and ease of growing, I would go straight to the triple crown blackberries and not waste time with a more labor intensive breed such as the trailing varities.

Information on "tipping":
http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/1000/1431.html