No thorns? Sweet!
The thornless blackberries in Mary Steffens’ backyard in Echo Park are going on three years, and one of the plants is finally setting fruit — big, purple-black globes of nearly seedless, sweet-tart juiciness.
Steffens got the plants from a friend at Ocean View Farms, the community garden in Mar Vista, but her initial planting site was too sunny. So two years ago she moved the plants to a spot that got late afternoon sun but was shaded during the hottest part of the day.
“This is basically a Northern Californian berry,” she said. “They don’t like heavy heat. The first year it was just getting established, but now it’s giving berries.” The blackberry ( Rubus
fruticosus) in some places is considered an invasive weed. Commercial production didn’t start in America until the 1870s. It got a jumpstart when horticulturist Luther Burbank developed a thornless variety around the turn of the last century with vines “as smooth as a pussy willow.” He combined a nearly thornless East Coast wild dewberry plant ( Rubus canadensis) with a highly prolific but thorny Himalaya variety from India that bore vines 100 feet long and could produce hundreds of pounds of sweet, spicy fruit.
Taking the prickle out of the bramble was a landmark achievement, and hybrids now number in the hundreds, many coming from the University of Arkansas, which uses some Burbank scions for breeding stock.
Getting it: Local nurseries may stock some of the popular favorites, such as the thornless Triple Crown. Most varieties are best planted in winter or spring, and they fruit in late spring and summer. The harvest time is short, mid-May through June. But ask about late-season varieties.
A relatively new one from the University of Arkansas named Prime-Jim flowers in midsummer and fruits in the fall.
Blackberries are easy to grow and tolerate poor soil but are susceptible to verticillium wilt; they should be kept away from any plots where tomatoes, potatoes or eggplants have grown.
At the end of the season, the flowering canes should be cut back severely because fruit appears on new growth.