divaqs's Blog

A Monster in my Yard – Himalayan Blackberries
Jun 22, 2007 | 9:55 AM PST
Tags: Himalayan Blackberries , blackberries , invasive

The bane of gardening in my yard is Himalayan Blackberries.

Himalayan Blackberries are a non-native and invasive blackberry that was introduced in Western Washington some time ago, and since then have spread to such a degree that they are taking over many wild spaces with giant brambles that are very difficult to deal with. They have huge thorns and at times seem to jump out and grab you in a painful embrace that is hard to extract yourself from.

As you might be able to tell, I have no love for this plant.

I do like blackberries as a berry. Every year my kids and I go to some of the many parks that have been infested and pick buckets of sweet and delicious berries for jam, cobbler, and pies. I just don’t want them in my yard.

When I moved into my house a few years ago, half my backyard was a giant blackberry bramble. It was so bad that for the first few months I didn’t even know exactly how big my yard was or that there was a spring flowing through my yard. After a month or so I got up some courage and spent over an hour to hack myself a little path through the blackberries, so I could find the fence poles that marked the edges of the yard. I then spent months fighting the blackberries in combat that left me bruised and bloodied.  To this day, the battle still rages on as the monsters refuse to die and new ones seem to pop up every day.

My neighbor gave up on the fight, so now my yard is threatened with a wave of invaders from his place of safety for them, waiting for me to lose interest so they can leap across my fence in mass force and re-take my yard.

 

I am a gentle man, not prone to violence, slow to anger, and abhorrent of chemical warfare, but when it comes to Himalayan Blackberries, my protector self comes out and all bets are off. I’ve tried hand to hand combat, trying desperately to wrestle them out by the roots. I’ve tried repeatedly attacking them with weapons of destruction via my brush cutter.  And now I have fallen to new lows of attacking them with chemicals.  My strategy of late is to poison them via snipping a vine and dipping the end in concentrated RoundUp, hoping that the poison will spread to the roots, killing the whole plant. So far, I haven’t seen the desired effect, but I am still giving it some time.

Yes, I am a plant murderer.  I have to be if I have any hope of protecting my vulnerable fruit trees, berry bushes, herbs, and vegetables.