Wild Blackberries- hate 'em or love 'em? (to buy, train)

[pikabike]

Originally Posted by Haakon

The berries are good, the plants suck and aren't worth it for the berries. Invasive, nasty, thorny, grow like mad, take over any open space, definitely not worth the trouble for the berries.

This sums it up well.

Don’t forget birds love the abundance of berries, too—purple bird poop everywhere!

[Serious Conversation]

I love wild blackberries. Can't beat their taste this time of year.

[mlulu23]

Originally Posted by pikabike

This sums it up well.

Don’t forget birds love the abundance of berries, too—purple bird poop everywhere!

Yeah, pooping out the darn seeds so they sprout everywhere. I'm serious, if you have a yard go over it every week looking for those seedlings to dig up. Because if you don't get them when tiny they develop roots down to China, and are really hard if not impossible to get out. Those, and Scotch Broom were everywhere on the Olympic Peninsula.

[pikabike]

Originally Posted by mlulu23

Yeah, pooping out the darn seeds so they sprout everywhere. I'm serious, if you have a yard go over it every week looking for those seedlings to dig up. Because if you don't get them when tiny they develop roots down to China, and are really hard if not impossible to get out. Those, and Scotch Broom were everywhere on the Olympic Peninsula.

Plus shotweed, stinky Bob, and bindweed.

[mlulu23]

Originally Posted by pikabike

Plus shotweed, stinky Bob, and bindweed.

Bindweed I'm familiar with, but don't know shotweed yet. And I used to work with Stinky Bob, lol . He was a royal pain. Oh you mean the weed .

Another nightmare is perennial morning glory. They have beautiful big white flowers, but spread everywhere from thick fleshy whitish shallow roots, and come back every year meaner than ever. They look like hell when the vines die from the cold, and they can cover everything. They kept coming over from next door, omgosh I hated those things!!! I'll have to look up shotweed, and stinky Bob. Yeah, you can grow anything in zone 8a including a fine crop of weeds.

[mlulu23]

Originally Posted by pikabike

Plus shotweed, stinky Bob, and bindweed.

Oh yeah, I remember seeing, and pulling shotweed, but didn't know what it was called. I thought it was kind of pretty. Just found out it's edible.

Fresh Start Cooking: Shot Weed - as Local as it Gets

Stinking Bob is interesting. I remember seeing this also. It's a perennial geranium, and a herb. It says the root system is shallow, and easy to pull. It's kind of pretty too, although considered a noxious weed in King county.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geranium_robertianum

https://www.kingcounty.gov/services/...rb-robert.aspx

------------------------------------------------------------

[pikabike]

Originally Posted by mlulu23

Bindweed I'm familiar with, but don't know shotweed yet. And I used to work with Stinky Bob, lol . He was a royal pain. Oh you mean the weed .

Another nightmare is perennial morning glory. They have beautiful big white flowers, but spread everywhere from thick fleshy whitish shallow roots, and come back every year meaner than ever. They look like hell when the vines die from the cold, and they can cover everything. They kept coming over from next door, omgosh I hated those things!!! I'll have to look up shotweed, and stinky Bob. Yeah, you can grow anything in zone 8a including a fine crop of weeds.

What you call morning glory is the bindweed. Horrible weed, very hard to eradicate—worse than the Armenian blackberry.

[mlulu23]

Originally Posted by pikabike

What you call morning glory is the bindweed. Horrible weed, very hard to eradicate—worse than the Armenian blackberry.

Yes, nasty, invasive monsters. I looked, and I looked and found this site below. I had thought that these were two different weeds entirely, but had a hard time finding backup on it. This explains it very well with photos. The one I called a perennial morning glory is the Hedge bindweed. The smaller is the Field bindweed. I despise them both.

https://oregonstate.edu/dept/nursery...ine_weeds.html

I had both of these in my old yard in abundance. The Field bindweed is kind of scrawny, and thin. The Hedge bindweed is much more robust with larger leaves, and flowers, and grows long like a jungle vine. Kind of like a field bindweed on steroids, lol. They are both miserable, horrible, and nasty. My ex husband loved the big variety, and said he would grow a whole yard of them if he could. He wouldn't help me get rid of any of them. That was just one of our many "disagreements" . That one thing is reason enough for a divorce, lol.

[pikabike]

I hate them both, too.

We have the field bindweed here. If on open ground, it lies fairly flat. But if near a taller plant, it twists and crawls up the plant like that horrible hedge bindweed relative.

When we lived in WA, an uphill neighbor declared she was going to plant “morning glories” to (she thought) stabilize the soil around her home, which was poorly sited right on the edge of a steep slope. I told her that the state used snowberry bushes for that purpose, and that MG were invasive. She planted the evil things anyway. Couple years later, they were climbing up the entire corner of that house, along with creeping down to our back yard. Fortunately, their landlord sold the house to someone who cleaned up much of the weeds and did some proper stabilization.

Thanks for posting the link. The photos and descriptions spell out the differences very well.

[WestGuest]

Yeah thanks for the link- finally some things even i can grow!



As for the blackberries-- I'm back in Texas and in the stores "on sale $3.99" for a tiny container. I told a clerk "Hey those are free all over Washington State" He wasn't impressed.