Blackberry & Raspberry Trellis ⋆ Vintage Mountain Homestead

Blackberry Trellis: How to Build

Disclaimer: This gardening post is written from the perspective of the hardy zone of 7b-8a.

Our home sits on a nice rectangular one acre spread but someone before us put in a white fence in the middle of our backyard. We have been told by neighbors, a wife demanded her husband to install the fence because he kept collecting junk cars. He apparently stored cars there and she wanted some sort of backyard. If you look in the picture above, our acre stretches all the way to those three large oaks.

Well, I didn’t mind the fence but it was starting to fall apart. It either needed to be repaired or upcycled into something else.

Since the posts were in excellence shape (probably pressure treated) I decided to make a large blackberry trellis. We love blackberries but this trellis can be used for raspberries or any vine plant that needs some support. Of course, if you don’t have a fence like me, then you can buy and install 4×4 posts yourself.

I found some sturdy 2″ coated metal mesh which can be used for chicken fencing. It was too hard to make one long piece so I measured out each piece to fit from one beam to the next, which is about 7 feet wide. I used a pair of wire cutters and cut my wire chicken fencing.

I didn’t place the wire against the ground but raised it up about 6-8 inches off the ground. Holding the wire fencing in place on the first beam, I hammered horseshoe nails into the fence. You can probably use a nail gun to save you on time and trouble. But hammering in horseshoe nails is much cheaper. Trust me, you will get really good at it by the end of the project.

horseshoe nails — *Horseshoe nails used to attach fencing.*

Once the first beam was secured, I stretched the rest of the fencing to the next beam. Trying to keep it pretty level with some help from a second pair of hands, I hammered the end of the fence to the second beam and so on until I had finished the trellis. I had placed a trellis on both sides of the beams, which gave me so much more room for more plants and surface area for the vines to grow. And more vines means, more berries and more berries means more yumminess.

What Works with this Trellis

March in North Carolina starts to get warm and our blackberry vines start to grow leaves and new vines. With using a larger metal fencing as a trellis support for the vines, you can easily weave the blackberry vines in and out of the fencing.

This is training the vines. I like training blackberries vines because it looks aesthetically pleasing to the eye and it also keeps things organized. I can easily harvest all the berries because they are not interwoven amongst each other and all parts of the plant get equal amounts of sunlight and a chance for bees to pollinate the flowers.

If you need to secure a vine temporarily so it doesn’t come unraveled, take some garden twine and tie it to part of the fence. You can always cut these ties off once the vine grows more and can hold itself to the fence.

I like to put bird netting over my blackberry trellis. I have such a problem with birds eating my berries before I can get to them. You can purchase the netting pretty inexpensively at your local hardware/garden store or online. Just make sure you measure how much you need. It is really annoying to buy the netting and put it up just to notice you have one entire side of the trellis exposed to two winged pecking machines.

I also put four inexpensive wooden stakes around the outside of the trellis. These stakes will keep the bird netting from laying straight onto the blackberry vines.

netting blackberry trellis — *Place glass and stakes to keep netting off vines and trellis.*

If you think the stakes will break your netting, you can place an old clean glass jar on the end of the wooden stake and wrap the netting around the glass. The wood stakes do keep the netting in place without moving so be careful when placing and pulling on the netting.

After harvest time, just peel off the netting, wrap up and store for next season. Since I have cut my netting to size for my specific plants around the yard, I keep my netting in a Ziploc bag with a label on it or if it is too large you can fold it and then use a colored zip tie to identify the bundle of netting and keep it all from unfolding. Because, trust me you will forget and this just saves time from laying all your netting out and measuring which piece goes to what plant.

I also use my old fence for a Gutter Garden to grow arugula, spinach, green and red salad lettuce.

Be sure to make these amazing berry recipes at harvest time:

Blackberry Jam

Vanilla Lavender Blackberry Jam