My blackberry,first year
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Very pretty and very delicious! Mine are still green, just picking my first raspberries. The raccoon (s) ate my black raspberries their favorite!~
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your raspberry is later season, mine are closer to be done
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My first try at blackberries is just getting going, but I am having a big problem with tree-rats stripping the fruit and breaking the laterals long before the berries ripen. This is my second year, and I still don’t know if I will get to taste any blackberry fruit this year. 
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I would trap them Paully. There is a tree rat thread where you can get some good pointers.
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I visited Clarks farm last weekend. His heirloom strain of blackberrys are impressive. They set a ton of sweet juicy berrys. They they have incredable root systems sending lots of new canes, sometimes 10’ or farther from this years canes. They thrive with almost zero maintenance other then occasanaly mowing over dead areas and to control growth. They are the best example of working permaculture I have seen locally.
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Thanks @clarkinks. I have read that Tree-rat thread and actually ordered a Kania trap at the beginning of June, but they are still back-ordered and have been unable to ship me one. So more recently I ordered a WCS Tube-trap and it is already working well!
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Yea I’m having a great harvest this year too. The plants are so easy if I can get them through the winter. I picked 2.5 gallons yesterday. Pretty much off of 2 plants.
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Needing help.
There’s trouble in the blackberry patch. It doesn’t show in the video but the patch is surrounded by 2’ high 1" chicken wire and topped by bird netting supported by wire and PVC.
The first invader
The second group of invaders
So the question is: What is the chance of the tube trap working with either of these? And suggestions for bait?
Thanks for any help.
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How about a trap that is open on both ends and just stick it in the fence as an inviting "doorway?"Maybe put a few berries leading in along the ground? I’ve never tried it. Just an idea.
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Not sure what a tube trap is but a cage trap will take care of both coons and possums.
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39thparallel,
Glad you came over it was nice to have you here during blackberry season. Blackberries are a great crop in a lot of ways. Hopefully the plants will do as good for you as they have done for me. Thanks for the delicious vegetables!
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My wife and my mom, who is up here visiting us from Oklahoma for the first time, picked a lot of blackberries this weekend. All of our BB’s grow wild on the farm, so I don’t know what variety they are, and the canes are plentiful. I think she canned about 10 pints of them that evening, and made a bit of jelly with what was left. Our berries aren’t real sweet, and I’m not as big a fan of them as my wife, but she seems to like them.
Mom talked her into making a BB cobbler last week with some berries that were picked then. This was after she made a peach cobbler with fruit that Mom brought us from Porter, peach capital of OK, so they say- very tasty. Mom might have a bit of a sweet tooth…
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Great video, I find coons and possums to be very easy to live trap with sardines or even a wet canned fish flavored cat food, the problem with sardines is sometimes I eat them all up and have no bait.
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Thanks Jason. So I’m in the situation many fruit growers likely find themselves in. Don’t grow fruit, OR, learn to kill fruit predators. The former is the easy way. But I’m mustering strength for the latter. I’ve ordered a live racoon trap. I need to get a bin to drown them in. For a city girl this obstacle is HUGE. 
Trap them yourself, then call a professional for disposal for a nominal fee, they will return the trap after.
The sense of accomplishment is great, but it is an every season battle.
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Good idea Seth. I def need to look into that.
Funny, I thought I was well prepared to address the bird threat, and the bunny threat. When I saw netting supports bent over and the branches broken I was surprised and set up the game camera. Sigh.
Yes, I don’t like it either and I grew up hunting. It is just about the only way to protect my fruit. Live traps are not as kind as they sound either. I trapped a groundhog in mine last weekend. I checked it at ten in the morning and again at 3 pm. It was in it when I checked at 3. It had struggled so hard to get out that it was nearly dead from exhaustion. I quickly put him down. My mulberry grafts are now growing again.
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The hardest part for me is when you shoot and don’t fully kill them. It happened twice to me once with a squirrel and once with a coon. For both animals they growled after the first shot and they whimpered after the second shot and then died. These animals are not dumb and its hard to have to kill them.
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Yes, I think a well placed shot is the most ethical but it can be challanging if they are moving around. It is not a real big target.
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