Karo,

Hi. Welcome to the forum. I promise you that posting and joining the conversations is a lot more fun than just lurking.

Do you have sandy soil or sandy loam soil? If so, adding some sort of organic matter, whether cow manure or compost or whatever, is really all you have to do. Blackberries love growing in that organic matter. If you have dense, slowly-draining clay, you may need to build raised beds to get the crown and roots up above the grade level clay. We can discuss that further if you do have clay.

My first experiences with blackberries were long ago when I was a child, and I just want to say that I thought that walking into a relative's garden and being able to pick and eat berries right off the brambles was MAGIC. I adored it so. (The same was true with strawberries, peaches, apples and pears, by the way.) With the first blackberries I grew as a gardener, the plants did really well for a few years, but I probably didn't amend their soil (red clay) as well as I thought I did at the time because they died after a few years. Before they died, though, they produced really well and I loved walking out to the berry patch to pick a handful of berries to carry back indoors, wash and dry, and drop onto the top of a bowl of Corn Flake Cereal or to stir into a cup of plain yogurt. What could be more fun? (Maybe doing the same thing with strawberries!)

My new berry patch that replaced that one was planted into well-amended sandy soil, and I expect those plants to live a long time. We also have native blackberries scattered around our rural property and those tiny berries are so yummy too.

I think you'll be fine if you just amend the soil, plant the berry brambles, water them in and then watch how they grow. Some wild animals will eat the plants (maybe deer, but I've not had much trouble with rabbits eating them and our place is Rabbit Central). You may need to put bird netting or some sort of fencing around the plants to prevent them from being nibbled.

Just remember to carefully read and observe the pruning directions because pruning off the wrong limbs or pruning at the wrong times can wipe out your crop.

Any time you bring in manure or any other purchased soil amendment that could have been treated with a certain, persistent class of herbicides that could kill your plants, it always is a good idea to do a bioassay to test the manure before you add it to your soil. If you've been lurking here a while, you've likely seen other discussions of "killer compost" so you're probably aware of the need to be cautious and to not bring anything into your garden without testing it first. If the herbicide residues are in your manure (or compost, hay or straw), they can contaminate your soil and kill your plants.

It is hard for me to emphasize strongly enough how powerful the herbicide carryover can be and how levels of residue of just a few parts per million can kill your plants. I have become incredibly careful with bringing any organic matter at all onto our property because I do not want to inadvertently contaminate soil that I've spent a decade and a half improving. If you let those residues get into your soil, it can take from 1 to 4 years to get rid of the herbicide residues, so it always is better to prevent the problem from happening in the first place.

I'll link an article that describes how to test your manure for herbicide carryover before you use it. Hope this helps, and if you have more questions, please ask them. There are no stupid questions and every single one of us was a new gardener once upon a time.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Testing for Herbicide Carryover/Killer Compost

Wow, thanks Dawn! This is great info.

I hadn't actually given much thought to contamination from bagged manure and compost I've been using from big box stores as my tiny worm colony is working away. Lots to read and consider.

Last year was the first time I'd planted in-ground at this property and it was in a patch where the previous owner had a raised bed (with landscaping cloth, sigh) that we'd turned over and had been adding grass clippings for a few years. I amended with peat moss and bagged manure/compost to grow primarily tomatoes, basil, marigolds last year. Now my partner is taking over that plot and I'm starting to work another area with similar intentions of creating a mounded raised-not-bordered bed.

We have primarily dense reddish clay after about 1" in our lawn -- but of course, like a new gardener mistake, no soil test. I was starting to imagine that planting the canes would be almost no work -- a few bags of manure and patience. I like the bioassay method of growing pea shoots -- what a simple and delicious experiment! Hearing from your experience is invaluable -- canes doing good for a few years and then giving up is not the goal!

My partner grew up in rural Missouri with a blackberry patch and was relieved to hear I bought thornless varieties!

Karo