Hunting down the Blackberry Zombies....
A while back, we had a grand plan of lining this particular wall of garden with Blackberries... and so, we planted three little bushes of Blackberry plants to allow it to spread out along the wall. Unknown to us at the time (we are novice gardeners...), Blackberry bushes come in two varieties... an invasive type and another that is not invasive. We had bought the blackberry bushes at a garden centre and so we had assumed that we had the non-invasive type, and that they would stay roughly where we had planted them.... unfortunately, after some sleuthing on the internet by my wife... we found that at least one of the Blackberry bushes were actually of the INVASIVE type!
Now, our garden isn't that big... and the invasive type of blackberry would quickly overrun every other plant in our garden. Plus, the invasive type has thorns as well... so there many reason why we would want to remove them before they got completely out of hand. So, after a growing season... I removed the blackberry bushes (it sounds like I waited one year after knowing that it was invasive... but we actually removed them as soon as we found out!).
I had people telling me at the time that I would be removing new outgrowths of Blackberry for quite a while... but I hadn't really thought that it would be such a problem... but here I am maybe two years later... still trying to put down zombie shoots of blackberry that keep poking their heads up above the soil!
The most insidious thing about the invasive blackberry is the fact that it seems to only take a little bit of the original plant to grow into an underground network of roots that only starts to pop up above the soil after being established strongly under the ground.
As you can see in the photo above, the little shoots of blackberry at the top are just a very small portion of a network of roots under the ground. The bits that do stick up above the ground can break off quite easily from the main root... in fact, even the main network root can break quite easily if you pull on it.... and as I have found out from past experience, even the smallest bit left in the ground can quickly grow into a strong network that is a pain in the arse to get out again!
I've opted for a bit of a viscous approach to getting the roots out now... Taking the part of the blackberry that sticks its head above the soil, I get the tools under the main root and loosen the soil as much as possible before even attempting to slowly follow the trace of the main root. I'm trying to lever under it all the way to the bitter end... and sometimes, that can be around a metre length! Whilst tugging it up and levering away under with the garden tools... I've found it best to be feeling the root and the earth with my hands instead of looking with my eyes... you can feel when the tool is under the root as you lever it, and that is the most important part... the worst thing that you can do is to prematurely sever the root with the metal spade.
... my wife wants me to try and be more careful with the other plants... but I'm more of the opinion that we need to place priority on getting every last bit of blackberry root out of the soil... and preferably doused in holy water before being ignited! Quite possibly with a stake through it's bitter and dark heart. If that means that other plants get damaged or accidentally uprooted along the way... well, that is the price that we have to pay! Remember, if any remnant of the blackberry zombie gets left in the ground, then I'm going to be doing the same thing in a couple weeks time...
... even with the best of projections... it appears that I will be at least doing this for the next few years. Apparently if you are pretty thorough with the uprooting, then you can expect roughly a quarter regrowth each year! So, while the weather is good... I'm getting as much of the underground network as possible! This is going to be my nemesis for the foreseeable future... only one of us will survive this!
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