Blackberries vs. vampires
Do you have dirt under your fingernails? It’s okay if you do. Squeamish naifs from Beverly Hills might blame your dysgenic heritage, but maybe you’re living the dream like Thoreau in the woods. Another badge of honor would be fingertips stained by blackberry juice, and we are fast approaching purple fingertip season. That’s a good thing.
I was fortunate to grow up near blackberry brambles. No one needed to plant blackberry canes because we knew where the thickets were. In mid-spring, the blossoms set and soon enough the green berries turned red which was good enough for five-year-olds until we knew to wait ‘til the berries turned darker and sweeter. It was hard to wait.
It should be noted around the world there are thousands of blackberry hybrids such as marionberries, boysenberries, tayberries and loganberries. Don’t forget ollalieberry, which is a cross between a loganberry and a youngberry which makes it two-thirds blackberry and one-third raspberry. It’s a difficult family tree to follow, so let’s not go there.
Traditional blackberries in the wild are perennials. The root clump sends up primocanes the first spring which do not bear fruit until after the first winter when suddenly – with sophomore enthusiasm and elan – they become floricanes which bear flowers and fruit. The fruit is a cluster of several single-seeded drupelets that change color as they mature from green to red to purplish black.
At the end of the second year, the floricanes – having borne their berries – dry up, turn reddish-brown and die. In the wild, the dead thorny floricanes remain and empower the brambleness and thorniness of the blackberry thicket. In a carefully managed garden, the dried up floricanes should be snipped off, cut into pieces and added to a leaf mulch pile.
Pruning of blackberries canes is an art deserving of artistic interpretation. If you have blackberry plants trained on a trellis, you must apparently know how to train your canes. Good for you. This would mean you remove dried floricanes at the end of the season. Next, you would trim floricanes to fit the space you have envisioned while preparing for canes which did not read the manual of your vision, and that’s okay.
Plus, pruning blackberry canes requires 12-gauge gloves and near-hazmat suit protection because the very natural thorns innocently exist regardless of your pure intentions. There are canes which are thornless, and plant developers drool over crossbreeding more thornless varieties such as Smoothstem and Chester Thornless. In my garden, blackberries were here before me and they are historically thorned. I wear protection.
So, let’s say we wait until the fruit is purple ripe… then what?
Blackberries, once harvested, are perishable and last only a few days in a refrigerator. A red immature blackberry once picked does not continue to mature. What you picked is what you get. Therefore, if you found a bramble the size of a school bus and filled several buckets with mature blackberries, you and your purple fingertips have some tasty choices to make.
Pie-making people will make blackberry cobblers and crisps or mix them with blueberries on tarts. Don’t ask me for guidance. I eat them raw on granola with yogurt or with walnuts and apple slices for a snack. Jelly makers know what to do with too many blackberries. Or how about when it’s party time, mix a big batch of beer, lemonade, fresh blackberries with vodka just for fun, and then try to throw darts. The possibilities are endless.
An English legend maintains when Lucifer was dumped out of heaven, he landed on a blackberry patch, and as revenge for transitioning from heaven to a thorny thicket, he caused blackberries to turn bitter at the end of their season.
Also, if you have a vampire in your neighborhood, plant blackberries. Apparently, vampires passing a blackberry patch will stop first to count the berries, then the leaves and branches, then the thorns, and soon enough it will be daylight.
Truth be told, I have blackberries nearby and have seen neither vampires, werewolves nor Bible salesmen… just saying.