It is not unusual in the summer to find wild blackberries near places with water. Always, and especially when we were children, the plan to go and collect wild blackberries was wonderful . Of course, on the way back we always had dirty hands and a few scratches from the thorns of the mulberry tree.
If you are one of us, you have surely eaten wild blackberries and then never found that sweet and sour taste again... Well, good news: the blackberries that Antonio grows will surely take you back to the taste of your childhood.
Taking advantage of the fact that we went to harvest the crop on a Monday for all our clients, we visited Antonio's farm, where he told us about growing blackberries straight from the field . So in this article, we are going to learn how this delicious fruit is grown and, in addition, some tips for its correct conservation.
How do you plant blackberries?
In this blog, we have seen that working in agriculture is a lot of work. Sometimes, when we receive the products at home, we think it is a simple thing, but the truth is that it is not.
Let's start at the beginning, blackberries were first found in Asia and Europe. They grow as bushes and belong to the rose family, just like apples. Although they now grow wild in various parts of the world, Antonio cultivates them with the care they need to grow healthy and delicious. Let's go straight to his field to delve into the world of blackberries.
Antonio has his blackberries in a greenhouse . The arches that make up the structure form a long tunnel covered with mesh. This - our farmer friend will tell us later - is to protect the plants from the weather. But now let's go back to the beginning, to find out what the first thing to do is to grow blackberries.
To begin with, blackberries are very greedy plants, so they need to be fed very well . So, to grow them in the ground, before planting, you need to add a base of manure to the soil . It should be cow or horse manure or both, but never chicken manure.
We find it strange that chicken manure is banned, but there is a good explanation:
This is because chicken manure contains lime and what it does is turn the plant yellow. Because here in Valencia there is an excess of lime already in the soil. And so, if you put more lime, the plant assimilates it very quickly and then you have to make an additional cost to remove that yellowing with iron chelates, which are expensive…
Of course, this is not something that Antonio understood overnight, but rather it was like any good discovery: trial and error:
If you put in a manure that is in good condition for the plant, the plant develops very well . I am doing tests, just like I have the blueberries in 40-litre plastic bags with coconut fibre, I have 25 raspberries and 25 blackberries . And it will be a tremendous success , because they reach a spectacular size and a plant in the first year would cost you a kilo per plant. And that is not the case in the soil.
So, as the farmer explains, sometimes blackberries, like raspberries and blueberries, can be planted directly in the ground or in 40-litre bags.
Another point to take into account when planting blackberries is the size at which you buy them . Antonio explains that a 10 or 15 centimeter plant is not the same as a 1.5 meter plant. This also affects when it will bear fruit:
Well, if you buy the plant with the cane that is already a metre and a half tall and you plant it in September, you can harvest it in May , because it is already prepared. If you plant a 10- or 15-centimetre plant, you have to wait a year and a half. In other words, it won't work for that campaign, but it will work for the next one.
Of course it is convenient to start producing early, but it is not always possible…
I understand that sometimes the farmer cannot afford to invest in a larger plant, but he loses a year of harvesting. If, for example, he plants the same year and harvests a kilo of blackberries, with that harvest in the first year he covers the costs of the plant . But you have to invest, of course.
What does the blackberry plant look like?
Blackberry stems have thorns, one of which is the main stem and several which are secondary . Many of them tend to bend when the fruit begins to weigh.
The leaves have serrated edges and are dark green on top but somewhat lighter underneath. The flowers are hermaphrodite : they contain both sexual organs in a single flower. For this reason, in the blackberry flower we will find both pistils, the female organs, and stamens, the male organs .
Antonio tells us that they have no problems when it comes to pollinating them because they have beehives in their fields: The bee enters the flower when it is time and pollinates. It is a very productive plant and the bee really likes the blackberry flower so pollination does not pose any problems.
These problems that Antonio talks about with bees and other pollinators can be linked to the use of insecticides. Sometimes, aggressive chemicals are used in many plantations and this not only damages the health of our pollinating friends, but can even kill them . Another situation that, luckily, does not occur on Antonio's farm is that pollinators do not arrive due to the absence of flowers and plants that attract their attention. Having said that, let's continue, because once the flower is pollinated it turns into a fruit...
If you look closely at the blackberry fruit , you will see that it is like a small cluster made up of several small balls . In botany, it is called a polydruped fruit , since these little balls we are talking about are called drupes.
Plant and fruit care
As Antonio tells us, the blackberry plant is quite wild , so it does not require much special care. Not even when it comes to pruning:
The plant that produced blackberries this year and the fruit has already been cut is cut at ground level. And it will produce shoots that will develop during summer and autumn to produce the following year's fruit. In other words, the plant itself lasts one year. But it regenerates in a way that... Wow! The plant lasts one year, it is pruned and it will produce the following year.
Blackberries are a fruit that grows wild, so you can imagine that they don't need much care. But Antonio knows more about this and tells us:
The blackberry plant does not need special treatment, but in fact it does not. Well, if it rains, yes, but the truth is that if it does not rain, it is very wild. The blackberry is a wild plant, very wild. And there has to be a climatic issue for it to need special treatment.
So, in case it rains it is a problem but of course it has a solution:
Normally all blackberry production is done under plastic . We have it under mesh because of the heat and the stones, but for the rain, well, we have nothing. The rain, like strawberries, also affects botrytis. When it gets wet, it normally gets botrytis.
With this fungus, you have to be careful because the problem does not occur when the fruit is on the plant, but when it is harvested and shipped. Antonio explains about this fungus:
Botrytis is a pest that you can't see when you harvest it, but it reaches its destination . We are lucky that the destination takes three days at the most, between when I take it to when it arrives, it can be three days.
Of course, it is not always as direct as when you buy from Campos del Abuelo, where we send freshly picked fruit from the field to the consumer , and the problem occurs in the number of days that the fruit is separated from the plant . Our fellow farmer explains it with an example:
But when you have a production that has to be transported to Germany, for example, it takes three or even four days. This is: one day of harvesting, then -at least- four days to get to Germany, plus two or three days for sale… Well, it arrives with mold and the mold causes this plague that I'm telling you about, the fungus called botrytis.
This is avoidable in a very simple way:
So, for the fruit to arrive in good condition, it must be cut completely dry, and even more so with the system we have at Campos del Abuelo, because there is no refrigeration of the product . So, if you put something wet inside a cardboard box, the blackberry will arrive covered in hair before the fruit. This is because botrytis affects the fruit when it is ripe, not when it is green.
How to preserve blackberries for longer?
When we receive fruit and vegetables at home, perhaps one of the first steps we take to store them in the refrigerator is to wash them. But in the case of blackberries, Antonio tells us, it is not advisable to do this…
No, you don't have to wash it . You have to wash it before eating it. If you do it before, you're going to have a problem... They usually use chlorine, which will give it a flavour that it shouldn't have. Blackberries are practically the same as strawberries or blueberries. People can eat them without washing them, because they don't have any phytosanitary treatment. They don't have any chemicals.
At Campos del Abuelo we make sure that the fruit and vegetables we send to your home are grown using methods that respect nature . If you want to know more about how organic products are grown , we recommend that you read this article.
Finally, Antonio does recommend storing newly arrived blackberries in the fridge . And, if possible, leave the box they come in open and wrap them in plain film, the same kind used when there is half a melon or half a watermelon left.
The tour of the farm has come to an end for now. We hope that Antonio's wisdom about blackberries is as useful to you as it was to us. The best thing is that we already have the fruit to deliver this week and we have tried the blackberries from his field and they definitely taste like they did when we were kids. Luckily in this case we have made it through without a scratch.
Remember that at Campos del Abuelo you can buy fruit and vegetables straight from the field to your home without post-harvest chemicals and, as Antonio said, without any type of refrigeration. Also, by visiting our online store you can personalize your box with the products you prefer.
Until next time and thanks for reading!
