Some old trees that I cut about six feet tall I have now attached wire welded fencing to, my plan is to let trailing thornless Blackberry vines to grow up them. No need to drive in stakes, using the natural landscape, strong roots of former trees and some wire to tie the fencing to the trees. I plant ten of these fruit producing vines, three kinds of thornless blackberry plants. Sweetie Pie, Natchez and Chester. In addition to those three known cultivars I also have two others that I have acquired but they are an unknown cultivar. They may be one of the mentioned above or maybe something else. But all are thornless and should like the fencing as a support.
This welded wire is sold at most hardware stores. I got the tallest available, and about fifty feet of it. I already used some on another part of the garden, now I want to use some more of these old trunks for more trellis. I add thornless Blackberry plants below and then they can grow up the fence for support.
Holes were dug about five feet apart giving each plant a total of ten feet of space. This should give them enough room to really vine out and fill the area. The holes themselves are about five to ten times the size of these little plants. I then backfilled it so it had alot of loose dirt to run roots through. You can see all that red Georgia clay turned up while I was digging.
Some of the holes were harder than others to dig, such as the holes by the old Leyland Cypress trees. At the time of cutting they were quite large and ran some roots horizontally which I had to cut through with a pick axe. It was quite humid so it was slow hard work.
My bucket of thornless Blackberries. I got three of each Sweetie Pie, Natchez and Chester. So that would be six semi erect and three trailing varieties.
As I plant them I attach them to the welded wire fence. But some are not tall enough so it may take some new growth to get attached. Maybe this year or maybe next they will really start taking off.
These plants are pretty tough, seeming to handle the planting quite well. None of them broke and I have faith they will do well. It is now the autumn season so they probably wont do much this year.
Here is one of them before I plant it. Its a pretty small plant, so I expect at least 2 years before I get Blackberries from them.
Once I finish planting about five of these thornless Blackberries I start on the fencing on the other area I want to grow them in as well.
I am glad I cut these trees tall, now they are serving a purpose long after they have died. I hope the trunks hold up for a long time, though no idea how long exactly.
Rolling out the welded wire fence I have just barely enough to cover the trunks and to then attach to the sides.
Taking a break I find one of my more established thornless Blackberry plants and train its vines. I have had this one for a few years now so it will probably fruit before the ones I just planted.
Getting back to work I wrap the fence around one of the trunks to give it support. And then take the other end and using thick wire that I wrap around the welded wire fence and my permanent wooden fence.
I attached the fence to that corner of black wooden fence. Well it was black but now its covered in moss so its green.. lol
We take a step back and can see it all coming together. I raise the fence a few feet off the ground. As the vine wants as much sunlight as possible so I get the top of the fence at about six feet. I am hoping it will grow taller and stay evergreen, giving me a nice screen of vines.
You can see the green ties I use to attach the fence to the tree trunks. You just twist them up good and they stay tight.
I pull it as tight as possible. And once all secured I follow up using my plyers to put tension into the wire. I will do a post on how I do that. I blew my mind when I realized you can tighten a wire fence by putting "twists" in it. And it works well, did it on my other wire fence that I have setup previously to this post.
The wire fence is now attached to the tree tree trunks and then to my archery target stand. And on the other end its attached to the wooden fence.
It was a dirty job for sure, it started raining on me half way through the project. And when it stopped it was quite humid, that with the mud and tree bark made me look like quite the mess.
Glad have a platform to share my projects on, and get great feedback on them as well. Thanks Hive! It was fun digging in the mud together.
Hopefully in a few years the fruits of my labor will sprout and I could get over a hundred pounds of Blackberries. What am I going to do with all of them? Not sure, probably freezing alot of them. But this is a few years from now. Glad to have their supports built. I may add a second frame above the welded wire fence to give them another couple feet of growth. Thinking about using some 275 paracord which is pretty thin but very strong. I think if I used my 550 its total overkill, so I will go with something a little smaller. And running two or three lines across some tall dowels so my vines will have even more then just six feet to grow on. Maybe I could double it with some wires.
