For erect and semi erect blackberries, how tall should a trellis be and how tall do you let yours get? I’m trying to design a trellis, but I want to get it all done before planting because it’s so hard to retrofit.
What if I tried Tayberries or Logan berries? How tall would those need to be?
For Logans, a 5-foot trellis would be fine.
At the other extreme, vigorous, thick-caned berries such as Triple Crown can grow much higher.
I train them by arching the canes or their laterals that will then over-shoot my 5-foot trellis by a couple of feet. This puts the highest berries about 8 feet up, still reachable from the ground.
Logan canes are more fragile and cannot take a small radius bend (unless the tender end growth is trained every few days), but mine will still easily train to the middle trellis wire, about 4 feet from the ground.
For my 2 crowns of logan… I have a full cattle panel trellis setup. 50 inch x 16 ft.
The panel is supported with t-posts so that the top of the panel is around 7 ft high. The canes have to grow up some initally to reach the bottom of the panel but then they can go up 7 ft… then make a right turn and run 16 ft to the other end of the panel… and run off the end to dangle down to tip root.
I have two pcanes now that have run off the end and are near reaching the ground. The other two are nearing the end of the panel.
2 crowns… 4 pcanes … over 80 ft of cane grown this year.
It may be my hot southern location… and morning sun only planting site that they just seem to really like.
The thing you really need with logans is enough trellis to allow your pcanes to fill up…
And have enough trellis left for your pcanes next year to fill up… while your previous year canes are fruiting.
For me one full cattle panel 50 inch x 16 ft… is tight for two crowns and 4 canes… since each cane grows 20 ft plus.
TNHunter
Hmm. Trying to avoid the expense of a bunch more t-posts.
I only have some five and six footers, which once you pound them in aren’t nearly tall enough.
I have found that blackberries can easily be wound around the string I tie between the t-posts, usually about 10 inches between each level and don’t need to be overly tall if not too crowded. So 6 footers, driven in would give you 4.5 feet or so to work with and should be fine. The main consideration I would have is if you are stringing them out more laterally across shorter posts, I’d just space the crowns/plants a little further apart.
I have 6-foot t-posts for my Poncas, running in two rows with the rows about 15 inches apart and the plants running down the middle spaced about 4 feet apart. If I were going with a single row of t-posts for Ponca I would plant them 6 feet apart, but because I have the front row and back row of t-posts to spread them on they are okay closer. Caddo on the other hand is more vigorous and I have them on a single row of 7-foot t-posts and they are 6 feet between plants but should probably be 7-8 feet between them since Caddo is a beast. I don’t top my canes, but just wind them down along the strings. Ponca is mostly single canes coming up, whereas Caddo has pushed out a lot of laterals on the 10-12 foot canes, with some laterals being close to 6 feet already. I should probably prune Caddo to maintain a smaller overall mass of canes, but I just let them go and keep weaving them in and out to basically make a wall of plant.
I only have a single Tayberry, but it really puts out some long trailing canes, so I think I’d do 10 or even 12 feet between plants if I was doing a row and training them to a trellis made from 6 foot t-posts
In this video, you can see what my Ponca and Cado look like when they’ve filled out the rows and are fruiting.
I’ve done various trellis types for cane fruit and I think a single row of t-posts with nylon (so it doesn’t rot) string tied across every 10 inches or so works really well and is easy to train. Raspberries, where the canes are popping up all over work better on a wider trellis.
Sample… t-post and cattle panel trellis.
I grew obsidian on this one. It was not a full 16 ft panel… so 2 post worked fine for support. For a full panel you would need 3… t-posts.
Did you give up on it? I am removing all but one plant… nothing special with mine so far…
I have several Newberry left… I think you would really like it if you dont have it. Better than Logan and Boysen and most other berries i think… also much more vigorous. You would enjoy taming it… i sure cant.
@krismoriah … yes… I am giving up on Obsidian for now. First season it grew 6 nice pcanes… 5 of 6 were wiped out by southern redneck cane borer. The one that remained did produce some nice sized… really early, very good berries… that is if you could manage to allow them to hang a few days after they turned ripe color… without the birds pecking then to death.
They were minimally thorny… my birds did not respect them… ao I got few berries to actually turn ripe color… and then hang another 3 4 5 days to fully ripen.
Fully ripened they were delicious… but it was near impossible for me to get them there.
After that one cane fruited this spring… my 2 crowns seemed to have lost their will to live. They sent up some pcanes… that were small, thin and only 3 or 4 ft tall.
We did have 2.5 months of drought and heat this summer… which no doubt contributed to their poor performance.
I yanked them in August.
I think Obsidian would do better if I had them in a location like I have my logans… east side if house… morning sun only.
When we finish building our new home… I may try them again like that.
TNHunter
Notice in my t-post/cattle panel trellis pic above… you can easily raise the cattle panel up a good foot or so above the tops of your t-posts.
Cattle panel is pretty rigid… so no problem doing that.
@krismoriah … when we get our new home built… I would love to try newberry on the east side… (morning sun only) with logan and obsidian.
It may be a year or two.
Thanks
