How to Grow Blackberries in the UK

Blackberries are about as close to unkillable as fruit gets. They grow in almost any soil, cope with shade that most fruit dislikes, and give big harvests for very little effort. One healthy plant gives plenty for eating fresh, freezing, jam and crumbles from late summer into autumn.

Wild brambles grow in hedgerows all over Britain. Garden varieties put that same energy into bigger, sweeter fruit, and they’re much easier to manage. Thornless varieties mean no scratched arms or snagged jumpers. Here’s how to choose, plant, train, prune and propagate them, plus what to harvest through the season. Sunny wall or shady fence, there’s a blackberry for you.

Which blackberry varieties grow best in the UK?

Blackberries come in two groups: thornless and thorned. Thornless types are easier to prune, train and pick. Thorned ones are often more vigorous. Both crop well in UK gardens.

Thornless varieties

Ripe blackberries on thornless canes. Pick them when fully black and soft.

• Loch Ness: a great all-round thornless blackberry. Upright canes that are easy to train, with large, firm berries from mid-August to late September. Bred in Scotland, so happy in cooler gardens.
• Apache: very large, sweet berries on upright canes, from late July to September. Vigorous.
• Chester: a late variety that stretches the harvest into October. Medium-large, mild, sweet berries. Very hardy, and handy for following on from earlier types.
• Triple Crown: often called the tastiest thornless blackberry. Large, glossy fruit in August and September on vigorous but manageable canes.

Thorned varieties

• Karaka Black: huge, long berries, sweet when fully ripe. Thorny and trailing, so it needs strong support. Starts early, from late July.
• Himalayan Giant: a very vigorous old variety, now often found growing wild too. Masses of medium-sized, tasty berries and plenty of sharp thorns. Only plant it if you have lots of space and don’t mind a thug.

Variety comparison

Gardener’s tip: Plant an early variety like Apache or Karaka Black with a late one like Chester, and you’ll be picking from late July to mid-October.

When and how to plant blackberries

Planting time

Plant bare-root canes from November to March while they’re dormant. November and December are ideal, as the autumn rain keeps the soil moist and roots settle in over winter. It’s the same planting window as raspberries and other cane fruit.

Potted plants can go in at any time of year, but bare-root canes are cheaper.

Choosing a position

Blackberries grow in full sun or part shade, and cope with shade better than most fruit. A north-facing fence still gives a worthwhile crop, though sun gives the sweetest berries. Avoid deep, airless shade under dense trees.

The ideal spot is along a fence, wall or post-and-wire support where the canes can be trained sideways. Allow 3-4m of fence per plant. Blackberries cope with most soils, including clay, as long as it isn’t waterlogged.

Dig in plenty of garden compost before planting. It helps both clay and sandy soils.

Planting method

1. Fix horizontal wires to the fence or wall 30cm apart, from 90cm up to about 1.8m
2. Dig a hole 30cm wide and 20cm deep at the base of the support
3. Spread the roots out in the hole
4. Plant at the same depth as the soil mark on the stem
5. Backfill with soil mixed with compost and firm gently
6. Cut all the canes back to about 25cm above the ground
7. Water well and mulch with compost or bark
8. Space plants 3-4m apart along the fence

How to fan-train blackberries on wires

Fan training is the best way to keep blackberries tidy in a garden. It keeps the long canes in order, makes picking easy and makes autumn pruning simple. The RHS blackberry growing guide has diagrams if you’d like more.

The one-way system

Fan-trained canes on horizontal wires, with new canes and fruiting canes kept apart.

The easiest method keeps fruiting canes and new canes on separate sides.

1. In the first spring, new canes grow from the base. Tie them to the wires, fanning them out to one side.
2. The next summer, these canes flower and fruit. Meanwhile, new canes grow from the base. Tie these to the other side.
3. After picking, cut all the fruited canes to the ground. The new canes are already in place for next year.
4. Repeat every year, swapping sides.

This way you always know which canes to cut and which to keep. It’s a bit like training fruit trees on espalier wires, but blackberries are far more forgiving.

Tying in canes

Use soft garden twine or stretchy plant ties and tie each cane every 30-40cm. Spread them evenly across the wires so light and air reach everywhere. Crowded canes give smaller fruit and get more mould.

Aim for 6-8 strong canes per plant. Cut out thin, weak shoots at the base so the plant puts its energy into the best ones.

How to care for blackberry plants through the year

Feeding

Blackberries aren’t greedy, but a yearly feed helps. In early spring (March), scatter a general fertiliser such as Growmore around each plant at the rate on the pack, and water it in if the soil is dry.

Cutting old canes to the ground after picking. New canes take their place for next year.

Follow up in April with a thick mulch of well-rotted compost or manure. It feeds the soil, holds in moisture and keeps weeds down. Keep it a few centimetres away from the stems. The same feeding routine works for strawberries and gooseberries.

Watering

Established blackberries rarely need watering in a normal UK summer. But water deeply in dry spells in June and July while the fruit swells, or the berries come out small and dry. Give each plant 10-15 litres, twice a week in a long dry spell.

Blackberries in pots need watering every day in summer.

Pruning after harvest

This is the most important job. Blackberries fruit on last year’s canes, and once a cane has fruited, it won’t fruit again.

1. After the last picking, usually September or October, cut all the fruited canes to the ground
2. Untie them from the wires and clear them away
3. Tie in the new canes that grew this summer
4. Remove weak or damaged canes, keeping 6-8 strong ones
5. Space the canes evenly across the wires

Leaving old canes in place makes a tangle that hides disease. A clean prune every autumn keeps blackberries cropping well year after year.

How to propagate blackberries by tip layering

Blackberries are one of the easiest plants to propagate. Tip layering is what they do naturally: in the wild, cane tips touch the ground and root.

Tip layering method

Blackberries loving a sunny wall. They cope with part shade but fruit best in sun.

1. In late July or August, pick a healthy new cane that hasn’t fruited
2. Bend the tip down to the ground
3. Bury the tip 10-15cm deep in a small hole filled with compost
4. Peg it down with bent wire or weigh it down with a stone
5. Water it and keep the soil moist
6. By the next spring, the tip will have rooted and sent up a new shoot
7. Cut it free from the parent cane and move it to its new home

Each new plant is identical to the parent, so it’s a great way to share with neighbours or grow your fruit patch. Raised beds are handy for growing on young plants before they go into their final spot.

Gardener’s tip: Don’t want blackberries spreading? Keep cane tips off the ground by tying them firmly to the top wire. Any tip that touches soil will try to root.

Month-by-month blackberry growing calendar

Blackberry pests, diseases, and problems

Blackberries are tough and have few serious problems. Three are worth watching for.

Spotted wing drosophila

Spotted wing drosophila (SWD) is a small fruit fly that lays eggs inside ripening berries. Unlike ordinary fruit flies, it goes for sound fruit, and affected berries turn soft and collapse. It’s becoming more common across the UK.

Pick ripe fruit promptly and don’t leave any on the plant. Pop picked berries in the fridge straight away. Very fine insect mesh keeps the flies out, but it must cover the plant completely.

Grey mould (botrytis)

Grey mould is a fuzzy grey coating on ripe fruit, especially in wet weather. It loves crowded, airless canes, so good pruning and spacing are the best prevention. Pick off mouldy fruit and don’t leave it lying under the plant.

Blackberry gall mite

Blackberry gall mite makes some of the little bobbles on a berry stay red and hard while the rest turns black. The mites are too small to see, and there’s no garden treatment. Affected fruit is still fine to eat, just patchy-looking. Cutting out fruited canes promptly each autumn is the best you can do.

Red patches that never ripen are down to tiny gall mites. The fruit is still fine to eat, and cutting out fruited canes each autumn keeps numbers down.

Five common mistakes when growing blackberries

Avoid these and you’ll have a productive fruit patch rather than a bramble jungle.

No wires before planting. Canes grow several metres in a season. Without wires they flop onto the ground, root at the tips and form a thicket. Put the wires up first, then plant.

Leaving fruited canes on. Canes that have fruited won’t fruit again. Leaving them creates a tangle that hides disease and makes picking a pain. Cut them out every autumn.

Planting too close. Blackberries need 3-4m between plants. People used to blueberries or raspberries often underestimate how far the canes reach. Crowded plants give smaller fruit.

Forgetting the new canes. New canes need tying in regularly through summer. Left alone, they shoot off in every direction and tangle with the fruiting canes. Tie them in every couple of weeks.

Letting tips touch the ground. Any cane tip that touches soil roots and makes a new plant. In a small garden, that’s how blackberries escape. Keep tips tied to the top wire.

Wild blackberries and foraging folklore

Wild blackberries (Rubus fruticosus) grow all over Britain, fruiting in hedgerows, woodland edges and waste ground from August. Foraging for wild food is a long British tradition, and blackberries are the most popular wild fruit of all.

Old English folklore says you shouldn’t pick blackberries after Michaelmas (29 September), because the devil spits or stamps on them after that date. The real reason is simpler: late berries are often mouldy, mite-damaged or frosted.

Garden varieties give bigger, sweeter, cleaner fruit than wild ones. But there’s something lovely about a hedgerow bramble, so why not enjoy both?

Foraging tip: Skip berries along busy roadsides. Pick from hedgerows along fields, footpaths and woodland edges instead.

Now you’ve got blackberries sorted, read our guide on how to grow blueberries in the UK for another tasty soft fruit for your picking garden.

Hedgerows along field edges and footpaths are the best places to pick. Leave the roadside brambles and anything that looks mouldy late in the season.

Frequently asked questions

When is the best time to plant blackberries in the UK?

Plant bare-root canes from November to March. November and December are ideal, as winter rain keeps the soil moist while the roots settle. Potted plants can go in any time, but bare-root canes are cheaper. Don’t plant into frozen or waterlogged ground.

Do blackberries need a sunny spot?

No, blackberries cope with part shade well. They crop with around four hours of sun a day. Full sun gives the sweetest fruit and biggest crops, but even a north-facing fence can give a good harvest.

How far apart should I plant blackberry canes?

Space plants 3-4m apart. Blackberries are vigorous, with long canes that grow several metres in a season. Compact thornless types like Loch Ness can go 2.5-3m apart. Give vigorous thorned types like Himalayan Giant the full 4m.

What is the best thornless blackberry variety?

Loch Ness is a great all-round thornless variety. It gives heavy crops of large, tasty berries in August and September on upright, easy canes. Apache and Triple Crown are good alternatives with excellent flavour.

Do I need two blackberry plants for pollination?

No, blackberries are self-fertile. One plant gives a full crop on its own. Bees visit the flowers happily and do the pollinating for you.

Why are my blackberries small and sour?

Usually crowded canes, dry soil or picking too soon. Thin to 6-8 strong canes per plant and water deeply while the fruit swells. Wait until berries are fully black and come away at the lightest touch. A spring feed also helps fruit size.

Can I grow blackberries in a pot?

Yes, compact varieties like Loch Ness grow in large pots. Use one at least 45cm across and 40cm deep, filled with loam-based compost. Support the canes on an obelisk or trellis. Water daily in summer and feed fortnightly with tomato feed from flowering. The crop will be smaller than in the ground.

When should I prune blackberry canes?

Prune straight after picking finishes in autumn. Cut all the canes that fruited down to the ground, as they won’t fruit again. Tie this year’s new canes onto the wires, ready to fruit next year. Remove any weak or damaged growth at the same time.