Kitchen Garden Blog

Here’s a sight to strike fear into the hearts of allotment-owners everywhere.

If you’re taking on an allotment this season – give yourself a pat on the back, by the way, for getting past those eyewatering waiting lists – this is, more than likely, what you’ll be faced with.

Brambles are the number one allotment weed: they lurk in the wings until we’ve all gone home and then they strike. Give them free rein on an abandoned plot for a few weeks and they’ll be dancing all over it with glee. They’ll invade any more-or-less open bit of land: and once they’re on a roll, it’s like an invasion of triffids.

We’re talking machetes here, folks: and gauntlets. And head-to-toe protective clothing. These are the ballistic weapons of the weed world, trumped only by giant hogweed and the dreaded Japanese knotweed for sheer terrifying speed and unstoppability.

Actually, you don’t need an allotment to have trouble with brambles: I haven’t yet found a garden that’s free of them. You’ve got to admire them, really. Unlike most native wild plants, which are relatively well-mannered so therefore are dying like flies, brambles are taking over the world.

If you want to see it in action, take a look at this (possibly from behind the sofa).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNjR4rVA8to]

Sir David reckons it grows three inches in a day. Having seen them take command of an entire allotment within a matter of months, I can well believe him.

In my garden they’re colonising the hedgerow: that’s fine as far as it goes, since this nicely makes the most of the soft and cuddly side of brambles (well, at least the useful side): that is, it produces oodles of lovely juicy blackberries.

With brambles around you need never use up precious garden space for a cultivated blackberries (although I’ve always rather fancied the sound of Oregon Thornless, if only for the blessed relief of being able to pick blackberries without extracting thorns from your fingers for hours afterwards). Wildlings are every bit as delicious and we pick bagfuls for freezing every year. This is definitely a love-hate thing: I tolerate brambles partly because I have no choice, but partly because I actually quite like having them around at this time of year.

However they will keep getting ambitious. Every so often they’ll put out an exploratory shoot, whippy, thorn-laden and up to eight feet long, to catch my clothing or, worse, my face as I walk by.

If you let these touch the ground they will root instantly and produce a new plant: no wonder they can frog-hop across such vast distances so quickly. I usually have a pair of secateurs in my back pocket so that takes care of them reasonably well: but you do have to be on your guard at all times, and make sure you patrol every bit of your garden, even the more obscure corners, every couple of weeks or so.

If you’ve been a bit lax about the bramble control – maybe you’ve been rash enough to go on holiday for a couple of weeks, for example - or worse, if you’ve just accepted the keys to a patch of land nominally referred to as an allotment but in reality bristling with hoops like a scene from the beaches at Dunkirk, sterner action is needed.

First, before you do anything else, put on as much protective clothing as you can get your hands on. A thick pair of gauntlets; wax cotton coat; heavy-duty jeans or cords and thick sturdy boots are a must. Add goggles or a safety helmet if you can: brambles are notoriously whippy and can take their revenge in a millisecond – and if they hit your eyes you’ll know all about it.

Now you can get to work. First of all, remove as much of the top growth as you can. A brush-cutter makes fairly light work of it but you’ll have to clear the debris very regularly as it tangles up in big bundles, rather like barbed wire and about as pleasant to deal with. It is also no good for the compost heap (too woody) a pain to shred (too prickly) and all but impossible to persuade into green waste bags, so get a bonfire going.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll end up with an allotment full of stumps: this is where the hard work begins. Every one of those stumps must be dug out with as much of the root system as possible to prevent it regenerating. Again, burn them rather than trying to take them to the tip: they are impossible to handle easily.

It can help to tackle one small-ish patch at a time: make sure you cover the bit you’ve just done with weed-suppressing membrane or thick layers of cardboard, though, or the brambles that are left will quickly recolonise your cleared ground as soon as your back is turned. Once you’ve cleared the lot, you’ll still have the occasional seedling popping up, or a stray shoot will start colonising the plot again from a hedgerow or neighbouring field: but these are far easier to deal with by either digging them out or cutting them off as far back as you can.

If you just can’t face that, chemicals are the only option: ordinary weedkillers won’t make so much as a dent in the armour of a blackberry so you’ll need industrial-strength formulas like SBK Brushwood Killer. Rather than splashing it around willy-nilly, I find this is best used selectively – i.e. only on the very biggest, very thickest plants. These can have stems of up to 5cm across: the stuff of nightmares and requiring serious weaponry to deal with properly. 

I had one like this which made regular incursions from my next-door-neighbour’s rather unkempt garden in my last house. I cut the oldest and thickest part of the stem through with loppers in a slightly despairing attempt to keep it in check, and discovered it was so old it had become entirely hollow inside.  I’m afraid I got my bottle of SBK and ‘injected’ it direct into the stem. It may not be environmentally sound – but suffice it to say that the bramble is no more. Sometimes, you just have to fight fire with fire.

Tags: blackberries, brambles, weeds