I dedicate two discussion section of prime garden real estate to berries a few twelvemonth ago . I bought all kinds of interesting kind — tayberries , loganberries , thornless blackberries and a couple unlike varieties of hiss . I crusade hard to keep the weedy and aggressive Himalayan blackberries out of the eyepatch , and , follow the instruction in Stella Otto ’s excellentBackYard Berry Book , I even put a few stakes in the basis and strung wire between them with the to a fault optimistic idea that I would actually train these Charles Edward Berry up a treillage rather than allow them to grow into a tangled , unmanageable thicket .
But of line that did n’t happen . The berries laughed at my zany trivial trellis and quickly overpowered it . They invite the Himalayan blackberry back into the yard , like honest girls inviting a duo of bikers to their Sweet Sixteen party . That made it impossible for me to distinguish what was a weed and what was part of my summer yield crop . To make it worse , the instructions for pruning Chuck Berry vines were astonishingly complicated . Some varieties produce yield off the first class ’s growth , while others only fruit on canes that are two years old . You are suppose to set up some kind of trellis system that will allow for you to keep track of the first yr and thesecond - twelvemonth cane so that you cut off only the 2d - twelvemonth cane after they ’ve fruit . I can scarce keep track of my gondola keys . There was no way I was actually going to make a system like this workplace .
Why pruning has to be so complicated is beyond me . Surely Mother Nature does n’t differentiate between plants that bloom on first year ’s growth and those that bloom on second year ’s growth and destruct them consequently . So why should I ? I let the Chuck Berry to do what they require to do and once a year I wallop away at them when they get too unmanageable . ( This is actually not a bad strategy and you do get some berries out of it , although it mightrequire a ladder and elbow duration leather gloves to get at them . Hey , I ’ve still got some of last class ’s black Chuck Berry in a Ziploc in the freezer . It works . )
So that ’s what I did , finally : chopped down the thicket in its entirety , wading into the thorns with a pair of rusty pruning shears and some very inadequate gloves . It was terrible and time - consuming work , but I did get some satisfaction out of taking the whole sight down indiscriminately . No more first - year cane , no morefruiting cane , no more uninvited and poorly behaved Himalayan guests , nothing . The garden is mere . It looks like it ’s been mug . Maybe that ’ll instruct it a deterrent example . My Day of Pruning is over for another year , and that ’s all I care about .
