By Steven Biggs
A Simple Way to Grow Your Own Blackberries
What is the easiest way to make more blackberry plants?
It's called "tip layering."
In mid-summer, as their long, arching canes reach the ground, blackberry plants often propagate themselves by tip layering.
If you want to make more blackberry plants, it’s an easy way to do it. I once tip-layered a single blackberry plant into a 30-foot stretch of blackberries along a chain-link fence!
This article tells you about this simple approach to propagating blackberries.
What is "Layering"?
Layering is when roots form on a stem while it's still attached to a parent plant.
Many plants naturally layer when low-lying branches touch the soil. (I find currant "layers"—rooted currant branches—in my currant patch. Find out more about how to grow and propagate currants.)
I once tip-layered a single blackberry plant into a 30-foot living blackberry-plant wall along a chain-link fence.
Some plants don't layer as easily, and gardeners can help the process by:
Wounding the stem where it will contact the soil
Applying a rooting hormone
Pinning the stem to the ground (or burying a portion of it)
Once it has its own root system, the rooted layer can be detached from the parent plant.
What is "Tip Layering"?
Tip layering is when the tip of a stem touches the soil and forms roots. (It's sometimes called "tip rooting.")
Unlike blackberry stem cuttings, which need ongoing care, blackberry tip layering is a hands-off blackberry propagation method.
Covering more than 20 fruits, the focus is easy-to-grow fruit suited to northern gardens. Fruits include cherry-family crops, currants, cane fruit such as raspberry and blackberry, elderberry, serviceberry and saskatoon, haskap, plum family, medlar, melon, husk cherries...and more! Find out more here..
How Blackberry Plants Grow
Once the tip of the blackberry cane touches the ground, it will grow roots. This cane has reached the ground and will stop getting longer, and instead form roots.
A blackberry plant has long arching stems, called canes. The canes grow upwards, and when they get tall enough, they start to bend. They keep growing, and the tip of the can will often bend over and touch the ground.
Once the tip of the blackberry cane touches the ground, it will grow roots. When the roots are well developed, you can cut the cane to detach it from the parent plant, and you now have a new blackberry plant.
Other Cane Fruit for Tip Layering
Purple and black raspberries can also be propagated by tip layering.
(Red and yellow raspberries are different. They send out lots of suckers and grow into a patch. To make more red and yellow raspberry plants, simply dig up plants around the edge of the patch.)
Training to Prevent Tip Layering
Tip layering is an easy blackberry propagation method. But you can have too much of a good thing…
I've seen enthusiastic gardeners inadvertently allow and an impenetrable thicket of new blackberry plants to form!
Where you don't want additional plants, train the canes to keep them off the ground. If you have a fence, simply tie them to the fence. Or put in a few stakes to which you can tie the canes to keep them above the ground.
Pruning Blackberry Plants
One other thing to keep in mind as you grow blackberries is that the canes only live for two years.
Year 1: Stems grow upwards from the base of the plant, and as they get tall enough, arch over
Year 2: The stems produce fruit
So if you want to keep pruning simple, at the end of the growing season, remove any canes that have produced fruit.
FAQ Blackberry Tip Layering
What time of year do you propagate blackberries?
The blackberry canes often begin to tip layer on their own mid-summer, as the canes get long enough to bend over and touch the ground.
Are there other types of layering?
Yes. Along with the basic layering and tip layering we talk about above, there is:
Serpentine (compound) layering, where we make several layers on a long stem by burying several sections of it.
Stool (mound) layering where a shrub or tree is cut to ground level, causing it to send up multiple shoots, which are then mounded with soil. This gives multiple, rooted stems. (It's what I use to propagate my apple rootstock.)
Air layering, where soil or a damp medium is wrapped around an above ground portion of stem to induce root formation. (I sometimes use this if want to root a long, gangly fig branch. Find out more about fig propagation.)
Why grow so many blackberry plants?
For blackberry daiquiris, of course.
