Blackberry trellis

Today I finally got started on the blackberry trellis.  As I've indicated in prior posts, I've been dissatisfied with the cages we had first tried to hold up the blackberries.  The canes are simply too tall, and as a result, they bend over under the weight of berries and get tangled at a minimum, and break off at worst.  Plus, it's almost impossible to watch them enough to feed the new canes up through the cages, and once they grow out one of the holes on the cages, you cannot feed them back through, as the canes are brittle and will crack and break.

Earlier this week I grabbed two railroad ties I had laying around and set them at the ends of one row.  I then purchased the wire.  I had thought about using barbed wire, since I have plenty laying around, and it's not as if the barbs will be even close to as bad as the thorns on the canes, but I was afraid the barbs might damage the canes if they moved back and forth in the wind.  I needed some smooth wire.

In the past, I've used #9 wire for fencing--mostly for brace wire on long fences--but thought it would do the trick.  Unfortunately, it's very expensive and I didn't even see any at the farm store I visited this morning, so I decided to try high tinsel wire, a new for me.  After reading the instructions, I decided it was the most economic alternative and would also allow me to tighten the wires as needed.

We started by removing the existing cages--a process that could only be done with bolt cutters to cut the cages apart because the canes were so intertwined.  Once that was done, I strung some rope along both sides of the row and hand tightened it so as to get the canes off the ground.  I then strung out and installed two strands of wire.  The bottom strand is approximately 30 inches off the ground and the top strand is approximately 5 feet high.  This week I'll set the posts for the other two rows of berries and then put up trellises for both.  Here's some photos and video of the process.