Planting Elderberry bushes and Thornless Blackberries

With the forecast showing freezing weather over for the foreseeable future I figured this would be a great time to plant some of the more hardy plants outside. I bought some Elderberry plants last December and they have been waiting in their little pots for too long. We can see by how root bound they are they should have been moved to bigger pots a long time ago. So hopefully they will recover once placed in big holes outside.

When I put them in the ground I will work the roots out of their clumps and into the fresh soil placed in each hole.

With six of them, I think I will have too many at some point. But I guess that is a good thing to have... guess I am going to be making lots of wine with them.

Really excited to see these grow, they are small now but not for long.

I watched some videos on these plants, I can expect them to get over 10 feet tall in a short amount of time.

For the dirt added to each hole I will be using Foxfarm Ocean Forest. After placing them into the hole and adding dirt, I will cover the top with the clay dug up from each hole to keep it from drying out too much.

The holes dug are inside the deer fence enclosure, and spaced out 8 feet per row and 6 feet between rows

Its always hard to say where I should dig, but usually based on what I read online is pretty good info.

Wish I could get my skidsteer over to this spot to drill the holes, since I could not I used a shovel and did it by hand. Dug six holes for them each as few feet deep and wide.

Now they are in the ground and added the clay dirt on top that was dug out of each hole.

Soon it will rain and give them a good watering. But soon I will need to give them water when the rains do not come.

Hope they do well, they may not fruit this year but I think they sure could next year if they grow well.

Next I move onto the Thornless Blackberries.

With a bunch of roots I have some good starter plants, I cut them down to 24 inches or so as to keep them from going into shock too bad.

Got myself a dozen or so roots to start new plants.

Also dug up some comfrey, will move that over into the enclosed garden as well.

I also have some cuttings, the parts that were too long from the root balls I dug up. I will bury these partially and hope they grow making new plants.

A thirty foot fence was set up using t-posts. I still need to tie it down better but its good enough for a day or so until I can come back with more paracord.

As these blackberry plants grow, I will train them into the welded wire fence.

With so many root balls dug up, they filled in this fence nicely. Every four feet or so there is a plant. As they grow it should all fill in nicely.

The cuttings were placed into beds as well and covered up with dirt. Hopefully they will root and give me even more to plant.

Also put a couple in a raised bed, had so many.. lol

I really like the thornless variety. I grew the wild kind with thorns for a long time, and thankful these thornless types exist. The fruit is soo tasty right off the vine and once established they come back year after year.