Blackberries: Love 'em or hate 'em

When we lived in Oregon way back when, we had four acres of property. However one entire acre of it was unusable. Why? In a word, blackberries. They had literally covered a quarter of our property with a dense jungle of impenetrable thorns. With no tractor, we had little recourse to control them (except with pesticides, which I’m not keen on).

Don’t get me wrong, I love fresh blackberries as much as the next person. But yowza, they spread. And spread. And spread.

In our last home, the only blackberries in sight were those cultivated (and controlled!) in neighboring gardens. However I stubbornly refused to allow a blackberry plant anywhere near our property boundaries. No way, no how.

Here in our new home, I was dismayed to see wild blackberries everywhere. On hillsides. In pastures. Along the road.

The sellers told me they’d bulldozed this patch in one of the pastures a couple of times already. And hey presto, look! It’s baaaaack.

I’m not unduly alarmed at this point — so far we only have that one patch on our property — but I can assure you we plan to keep this patch contained (probably with the aid of the tractor).

That way perhaps we can enjoy the best of both worlds: fresh fruit, and no tangled jungles.