#planting blackberries

[cygnetbrown]

We Couldn't Pass These Up!

Blackberry plants in ground and mulched with chicken litter and grassclippings Even though blackberry plants were not on our radar this year, we found such a great deal on them that we couldn’t resist picking up five healthy plants to plant. At the farmers market last week, one of the Amish families was selling blackberry plants that they had dug up that morning. The blackberry plants were…

[zegalba]

The Life Cycle of a Blackberry

[hyydraworks]

Its spring time so logically time for berry calves.

[mimblex]

Berries - 3-color risograph print in teal, cranberry, sunflower

[summerwages]

made in the shade..

[theroadtofairyland]

Blushing Brambles

Watercolor On Black Cotton Paper

2023, 8"x 10'

Blackberry Blossoms

Private Collection

[morethansalad]

Blackberry Cream Oatmeal Sandwich Cookies (Vegan)

[geopsych]

Recent blooms in the gardens: blackberry lily (Iris domestica), Echinacea, Filipendula rubra, and daylily ‘Catherine Woodbury’.

[balkanradfem]

I haven't been posting lately because I've been overwhelmed with depression and medical issues, but this morning something sad happened that I want to share.

It's a year without fruit again, which is pretty harsh on me since I rely on foraged fruit a lot, but I figured I would just collect as many berries as possible and make jams and that would have to be enough. So this morning, I went to collect blackberries, I found a new spot, pretty far away but I could get there by bike. When I collected them all, I realized I still don't have quite enough for even a single jar of jam, and I went to my usual spot, where I've been just a few days ago, figuring I could get more.

And when I got there, I found that the entire huge blackberry plant has been leveled with the ground. I didn't understand what I was seeing, I collected a basket of blackberries there just 3 days ago. How could it all be gone? It was not just cut, but there was no leftovers either, the earth was black, there was not one leaf to be seen. It was like someone both cut and burned the entire thing. But that huge blackberry has been there for as long as I've lived here, and I assume, decades before that. I don't understand. In a year without fruit. You destroy the only local source of produce?

It doesn't make sense to me. It's been happening more and more as the climate changes. Instead of preserving the local sources of food as absolutely priceless and irreplaceable, people are leveling everything with the ground.

It was a huge blow for me, I'm feeling heavy with sadness. I don't want to share a city with people who destroy everything good about it.

[colorsoutofearth]

Harvest mouse (Micromys minutus) on bramble in autumn

Photo by Klein & Hubert

[petalodys]

❛ ⠀ blackberry flowers. ⠀ ❜

botanical photography ┊ (©petalodys)

[kazieka]

like, logically I am aware that honeysuckle is invasive in my area and that I should be glad it doesn’t grow in my backyard, But. on the other hand. tasty nectar treat :(

[wiley-treehouse-gardens]

Soon we shall have berries!!

[andulkaphoto]

Posters, art prints on Society6

[flowerishness]

Tanacetum vulgare (tansy) and Rubus armeniacus (Himalayan/Armenian blackberry)

Yesterday I went to downtown with a particular goal in mind. I wanted to take postcard-like photos of flowers with famous Vancouver landmarks in the background. The results were a bit disappointing and all I found was a nice show of Rudbeckia by the Science Center (yesterday's post). However, I did manage to get some shots of BC Place Stadium (our local football palace) with two familiar 'invasive weeds' in the foreground. in this sense my photography project was modestly successful.

Tansy was brought to North America by early European settlers for its purported medicinal benefits. As with the dandelion, the first tansy seeds arrived in a doctor's bag. Obviously, tansy has made itself at home and I see it all over the place.

The Himalayan blackberry was introduced to North America in 1885 by the American plant breeder Luther Burbank. According to legend, Burbank received the seeds from a person in India and naturally concluded this blackberry was from the Himalayas. Actually the guy in India got them from a collector in Armenia. Incidentally, this blackberry species may be extremely difficult to eradicate (and it has quite dangerous thorns) but it produces first-rate fruit.

[theroadtofairyland]

Blushing Brambles

Watercolor On Black Cotton Paper

2023, 8"x 10'

Blackberry Blossoms

Private Collection