bare rooted blackberries

[miffy]

Have just taken delivery of some bare rooted blackberries, when can i plant them out and in what position please..
Thank you x

[FB.]

Plant them as soon as posisble. Try to keep them damp at all times, even before planting (not dry, not waterlogged).

Plant them anywhere you like - once estalished (after a couple of seasons) they're tough as old boots and almost impossible to kill or get rid of, even if you want to.
They'll grow in almost total shade if necessary, although fruits will be later to ripen and often sharper-tasting and not quite as well flavoured, as a result of less sunlight meaning less sugars.

When you plant them, it would be wise to work on the assumption that you'll never get rid of them.

The very best way to grow them is to put three tall posts in the ground (about 5-7ft out of the ground depending how high you can reach!) with the posts about 6ft apart.
Put wires across the posts about every 12 inches up from the ground and plant the blackberries near the middle post. Train the new shoots along these wires, although it will take a couple of years before the plants are producing several new shoots every season.
Remove old stems and allow new ones to replace them. Consider having all of one year's stems on one side and all of another years stems on the other side - and cut the oldest stems down at the end of each season and tie-in the new shoots in their place.

Propagating new plants is easy; just bury the tip of a young stem in the ground and it will root. I've never tried cuttings, but I would expect a high success rate, especially if taken in the autumn, but quite possibly at almost any time of the year!

[miffy]

Thank you for your wonderful advice i have copied it and saved it, they were delivered on Friday and unfortunately i wasn't able to get down the plot this weekend because mum was ill.
What i will do though is give them a bit of water and keep them cool until next weekend them put them in the plot, thank you once again.Miffyx

[maypril]

I'm astonished that anyone deliberately plants these damn things! There should be a law against it like there is for Japanese Knotweed! As FB says, they're harder to kill than they are to grow!

[FB.]

When we moved house, the previous owners had a "wildlife corner" that had become a mass of brambles, thistles, nettles, ivy, hawthorns and such lovely wild plants.
Firstly, we cleared the surface growth.
Then we dug to a spade depth, forked it over a couple of times and picked out all the root fragments as they came to the surface.
Then we dug to two spade depths and forked it over, picking out any remaining root pieces.
Then we grew spuds on it for one season. They smothered almost everything else.
Finally, once the spuds were dug up, we then individually targetted the last surviving deep rooted weeds by digging all the way down to get the last of the root.
Then we grew spuds again the following year to smother the ground once more - and now it's a lovely little veg plot about as large as a small garden.
It took quite a bit of time and effort, but it was worth it - and was very good exercise.
Absolutely NO chemicals were used to eradicate the persistent weeds (brambles/dandelions etc).