Replacing an invasive species with an antagonist species?

Last year when I started my permaculture garden I pulled out an invasive blackberry push that was the best producer out of the others on the property. It had a deep root and had been there for years.


I planted new plants in the same spot including a raspberry bush from Walmart right where the root of the blackberry bush used to be. What I found was that the raspberry bush did not fruit at all last year, it put on maybe a foot or two of growth but had no berries.
I've been referring to Deep Green Permaculture''s Companion Planting Table and it says that blackberry is not a good companion to raspberry.

Did the blackberry bush do something to the soil that would cause the raspberry bush to not fruit? I'm pretty sure I planted a self pollinating variety of raspberry.


Is it advisable to not plan to put a plant where an antagonist species once was? All the other plants I put in around it did fine for their first year, blueberries, parsley and radishes.

I wonder if the well established root system of the blackberry needs a year to start letting the fine roots break down and free up those nutrients that the raspberry needs.

I did have to pull out 2 or 3 small blackberry ... idk saplings? little starting plants. I figured that they were from fallen berries or plant material from when it was chopped down before the root was pulled out.

Blackberries have tenacious roots where I live. I would not be surprised if the sprouts were from roots. Also, some raspberries fruit on second year canes rather than first. The raspberries also may have just not established themselves well enough to have the energy to fruit.

I'm wondering if the blackberry roots are just sitting down there waiting to take over the universe again when you aren't watching!

Honestly, I'd really like to see if your experiment works. If the Raspberry stops the Blackberry from reestablishing itself, I can see a *lot* of raspberry planting in my future. It's *very* hard to get all the blackberry roots out from my soil, and my experience is that they just keep coming back despite all my efforts to discourage them.

If *anyone* has ideas of what to plant over top of removed Himalayan Blackberries to discourage bits of root from sending up shoots, *please* contribute your ideas.

T Simpson - you mentioned it didn't berry, but did it bloom? Normally the bees are all over my raspberry blooms, so is it possible you've got a shortage of pollinators, and with only a single raspberry cane, they didn't notice it?

Jay Angler wrote:I'm wondering if the blackberry roots are just sitting down there waiting to take over the universe again when you aren't watching!

you mentioned it didn't berry, but did it bloom? Normally the bees are all over my raspberry blooms, so is it possible you've got a shortage of pollinators, and with only a single raspberry cane, they didn't notice it?

Honestly I don't remember if it bloomed or not, it might have. I did notice bees on it a few times so maybe it did.

According to what I read, plants of the rose family (at least apple trees and roses) exhibit autotoxicity, a form of allelopathic activity towards plants of their own species. Thus, it isn't recommended to plant an apple tree on a spot where there was an apple tree before, etc. Blackberries and raspberries are in the rose family, and closely related, so something similar might well be happening here...

Jay Angler wrote:
If *anyone* has ideas of what to plant over top of removed Himalayan Blackberries to discourage bits of root from sending up shoots, *please* contribute your ideas.

My country has the pro verb that "The blackerries prepare the oak forrest". So basically anything that strongly outshadows the backberries will outcompete it.

Furthermore raspberries prefer a more humousy earth while the blackberries can do with less fertile soil, so not every good blackberry spot is a good raspberry spot.

Edit: Maybe some thornless blackberry cultivar would be the way to go.