Aggressive, thorny and raspberry canes

I picked these canes up from somewhere, and they are really thorny and they spread aggressively.
I am pretty much unafraid most plants getting out of hand, but the thorns on this one bother me.
I haven't tasted any fruit yet, so I can't take that into account.
I have thornless blackberries , and and a different thorned raspberry that makes nice fruit,but neither are as vigorous as as these beasts.

I am actually considering killing this thing, if I can.
Tell me what would you do?

Is the question whether you should kill it or how to kill it?

I think if the plant is not working out in your garden, then you can cut it down, and keep cutting any new shoots it might send up.

Sometimes I feel bad giving up on a plant or culling the plants I feel like I should find a better way to deal with. Like shunning a friend or family member instead of learning to get along.

But in the garden if you just let the unpleasant plants take over it’s not really a garden anymore, and not such a pleasant or productive space.

To clarify,  I'm not sure if I should kill it.
It has vigor,  and the promise of fruit, but I'm afraid it will be hard to control because of the thorns.

I let almost everything grow, plus, this plant really WANTS to grow, and it should bring a bounty of food.

My willingness to let live comes with the knowledge that I can end a plant that is effing up my garden.
It also doesn't extend to plants that hurt me, like poison ivy.

I think it probably needs to go,and I now is probably the time to do it, while it is relatively weak and isolated.

Maybe let it grow in a half-barrel until you can judge the fruit, but don't let the canes take root in the ground around it.

These vines are huge!
I swear they kept growing over the winter.
There are lots of flower buds on the ends of the canes.
I've "planted" some of them into my biomass buffer strip over at the yarden.
"Planted" consists of laying them down and shoveling  some soil onto the roots.
I may regret this, but the buffer strip is where I'm sending otherwise unloved vollenteer shrubs/trees.

looks like blackcaps/black raspberry, one of my favorites! i know what i’d do, but i’ve got a lot of space to let them rule.

I agree with Greg, looks like black raspberry. The growth habit sounds like them for sure. I have many in my garden, though it's become more of a prairie area. They came up all along my paths and I thought I needed to move them. But then I had too many other things going on and didn't get to it. The next year, it was fairly easy to wrangle them so they went along side the path instead of through it. The result was bountiful berry lined paths. I bet they could be trained to go over an arch or trellis. Some of the canes on mine must be 10 feet or more. The flavor and texture is far superior to the red raspberries I have. And they're far more abundant and resistant to issues. They are thorny, but I've found it pretty easy to move them when needed as long as I wear thick gloves and long sleeves. They're one of my favorite plants in my garden. I think they'd make a great deterrent to creatures climbing and/or digging under fences if trained up along a physical fence too.

Hi William,

Those canes look like they could have come from my hedgerow 10 years ago.  I called them wild blackberries but they could have been black raspberries—I couldn’t tell the difference.  Either way, they were the most insidiously thorny canes that bore itty bitty fruits that were among the most incredibly sweet and savory that I have ever tasted!  With our nearly 1500’ of hedgerow I could just walk outside along a pathway I cut parallel to the hedgerow and pick to my heart’s content.  I always just ate right away.

Unfortunately those canes are gone—long since shaded over by heavy top growth that prevents fruiting but not thorns!  I hope your berries work out better than mine.

Eric

I agree they look like wild black-cap raspberries. My absolute favorite. I’ve been cultivating/propagating some that showed up in our yard for years now. Very productive and delicious. When I venture into the largest patch, I use a large stick in one hand to push the brambles away while picking berries. The canes arch down towards the ground, and the berries are mostly growing on the outer part of the arch, so you you can pick them without having to reach through the brambles much.

It pays to ruthlessly trim them to stay in their place and pull up any tips that root beyond the berry patch.

for what it’s worth, the pale, powdery blush over the surface of the canes is a giveaway for this species (R. occidentalis). very distinctive.

also, for those who want to remember the difference between raspberries and blackberries, raspberries are always cup-shaped, and kind of peel off the ‘form’ they grow on. with blackberries there’s no concave side.

I'm pretty excited to try the fruit!
Right now the fruiting canes live in sub irrigated planters alongside the driveway.
This has led to some unpleasant interactions, so they will be moved to the yarden after the harvest is over.

It's kinda funny,  but I have only the faintest idea where I got this plant from.
I think I bought it on a lark, maybe from Growing Value Nursery.
The vigor of this plant really knocks me out, but I don't think I fear it anymore, having transplanted some errant vines with relative ease.

So, how do I prune this plant for better yields?

Regarding pruning, they fruit on first-year canes in early summer. The canes that fruit this year will be dry, dead thorn-twigs next year, so chop them down sometime in fall when you feel up to a prickly chore. The canes will gown long and whip-like, and the tip of the whip will root and form a new plant where it touches earth.  If you like where your plants are and want to just keep them there and not have them colonize the yard, then support them to grow in a more upright habit and trim any "whips."  If you want more plants, just let the tips root and then in fall you'll have a bunch of new raspberry plants to share or move to a better location. Just  cut the connection to the mother plant and dig up the baby.

Hey I want to thank everyone for helping me with these plants.
They are delicious, profuse and resilient, with a unique taste.
Well worth the trouble!

The plants in this thread are no longer with us, but one of the annual plots I've rented this year is swimming in them.
I'll be transplanting them to the community food forest section of the gardens and rehabilitating the plot back to growing annuals.

I don't know if you killed it I woukd keep it never know when having a deterrent privacy screen like that can come in handy I would transplant some onto pots another location before killing it.

Hi. What variety are these? I am actually trying to find a variety of raspberry bush that is especially thorny  , I want them for a garden that is under a 1st floor window  as sort of an additional layer of  home protection, but since most people want LESS thorns not more it's hard to find ... (If you haven't killed these plants yet I'd love if you could send me some lol. I'm in NH)

Donna Bailey wrote:Hi. What variety are these? I am actually trying to find a variety of raspberry bush that is especially thorny  , I want them for a garden that is under a 1st floor window  as sort of an additional layer of  home protection, but since most people want LESS thorns not more it's hard to find ... (If you haven't killed these plants yet I'd love if you could send me some lol. I'm in NH)

I don't know what variety the pic shows... but here's a link to UNH about raspberries. If the info given doesn't tell you what you need, you can always call them. Did you know the state nursery sells plant stock every year? I've gotten roses there, but never looked for berries....

https://extension.unh.edu/sites/default/files/migrated_unmanaged_files/Resource007472_Rep10777.pdf

I kept them long enough to make a harvest.
Recently the garden coordinator asked me to print them back out of the walkways.
I started, planning to just do that, progressed to harvesting the canes for transplant, and ended up decimating the entire patch.
This plot is currently covered in chopped up branches.
I'm leaving them there till the leaves fall off and then I hope to biochar the branches.

As I worked with these plants I concluded their product doesn't make up for their thorns.
I've kept a few , because I can't help it, but they just make me want a better selection of the same species something with less thorns, more and bigger berries.