Back in May I posted a picture of a wild berry bloom. I had found a few berry plants behind the old machine shed in a cluster of weeds. I was hoping for a couple bowls full of berries to confirm that I had found a patch of blackberries. I thought the addition to the black raspberries in the timber across the road and the red raspberries we planted in the garden would be great. But, with the recent dry heat the berries didn’t make it. The plants are on rocky soil between the shed and the road ditch. In a normal year, they catch rain water as it runs off the roof of the shed, but are still well drained. On a dry year, it’s amazing there’s still green leaves.

There is a good side to this though… with it being so dry, the lawn mower hasn’t been working as much and that gave a couple new berry plants the chance to pop up in the yard about 10 feet from the original “patch.”

A New Berry Plant

Even though I haven’t been able to confirm these are blackberries yet, I plan on digging up a half dozen of these new shoots in the fall and moving them to the garden. If I’m right, I’ll have a black berry patch started in the garden. If I’m not, I’ll have a new weed in the garden to fight with.