Pruning, along with weeding, mowing, and caring for your garden and flower beds, is essential and can save your blackberries. Pruning shapes the plant, increases airflow, and lets more sunlight reach the leaf.
Blackberry bushes spread quickly if left untended year-round, so pruning helps. Blackberry bush pruning varies by season. You can prune them to the ground in winter or shape and clean them in spring.
Blackberry bushes should be pruned to eliminate pests, disease, and spread, boost blackberry yield, and maintain their appearance and manageability year-round.
Blackberry Bush Pruning Tips Before pruning, learn about your blackberry bush's two cane types. First-year canes are primocanes. Always-bearing kinds are brilliant green and bendy, and their tips blossom and bear fruit.
Floricanes are 2-year canes. They are robust and dark brown or crimson. All blackberry bush floricanes die after flowering and berrying. This helps you avoid pruning blunders because you don't want to cut off primocanes, except for spent berry ends after harvest.
Do not prune your blackberry bushes with ordinary scissors. Pruners for little, easy-to-clip canes, loppers for thicker, larger canes. In any season, cut and dispose of unhealthy canes.
Avoid leaving cut canes on the ground as they could spread the disease to adjacent bush areas. Instead, burn or bury sick blackberry canes. Prune your blackberry bushes year-round to maintain them healthy, neat, and producing more delicious berries.