Too Late to Prune Blackberries

Question from Sharon:

I have some blackberry bushes that have been in the ground here in rural Del Mar about a year and a half. I missed pruning the “old canes to the ground” in November as you suggest in your book. I am wondering if I should do it now.

I love your month by month book and was using the old edition until I went to order a copy for a friend and realized you had a new one! I ordered two….one for her and one for me! Thank you for producing such a treasure!

Answer from Pat:

Your blackberries are still relatively young, so no real harm has been done, since they need to grow for one year without pruning or training to get the plants established, but after that if you do not control the plants they will get away from you and you will be in a mess. Can you remember which canes fruited last year? If so, YES, by all means cut these to the ground now. If you have not already done so, now is when to build a trellis for them with wires strung from post to post to arrange them onto. Look at the pictures in a pruning handbook or online and read what it says in Sunset Western Garden Book. If you haven’t yet bought a copy be sure to get the older edition with a pink flower on a green cover since it includes more plants. (It’s still available online.) The newer edition is good too but has cut out many rare, common and even important plants from its encyclopedia section. This is a shame since this book has been an invaluable reference for western gardeners for over 70 years and it’s main value was always the encyclopedia section which helped gardeners identify and understand the many plants we grow and the various species and best varieties.

Thanks so much for telling me about getting a newer edition of my book. I keep meeting people who tell me they love my new organic edition. However, I often meet people who are still using the first edition that I wrote over 20 years ago and that was published in 1991. Much has changed since then. I revised the original book at the end of the nineties and that edition, known online as the “completely revised and updated” edition (and still available online) was published by Chronicle Books in year 2000. It is much, much better and more complete than the first edition since the publisher had not purchased enough paper the first time around and as a result they cut out my 5 introductory chapters. I saved them and in the 2000 edition put all that back into the beginning of the book, condensed down into just one chapter. Now i have written the all-organic edition people are loving that as much as the first two. But I guess those few hardy souls still living in the past will never be weaned from book one!

Your kind words warmed my heart! How lovely that you bought two copies and gave one to a friend. Thanks so very much. I poured so much time, attention and hard work into those books through the years that I am really grateful when I hear they are appreciated.