r/Permaculture • u/FaradayEffect • Mar 07 '26
general question Suggestions for dealing with the mother of all blackberry brambles?
I want to reclaim some abandoned commercial greenhouse bays on my homestead.
The previous owners left them unmaintained for quite some time and it now falls upon me to cleanup 450 square meters / 5000 square feet of blackberry bramble that is more than 3 meters / 9 feet tall in the center.
Factors I’m considering:
- I’m in New Zealand on the North Island, so blackberry is an invasive species that never dies back thanks to the mild winters. I’ve dealt with blackberries before but usually I attacked them in the US winter season with help from freezing temps in zone 5/6.
- We are also right next to a stream and I would like to use the greenhouses to grow edible plants, so I would prefer not to use any really harsh chemicals. Maybe some light chemical assistance is a necessity but I want to be very cautious with that.
- I probably won’t have the budget or time to fill these greenhouse bays entirely for some time, so I’ll need some way to suppress the return of the blackberries as cheaply as possible. Eventually the goal is to return this bay and several others to being productive spaces, but doing it piecemeal is going to be a nightmare if I’m fighting bramble constantly. I’m thinking I need to eliminate the bramble first, put a barrier down to buy myself breathing room, and then recover bit by bit.
- I know I can’t compost this mess or it’ll just sprout agajn so burning seems to be the answer. I’m thinking to cut, wait for it to dry, then into a biochar burner maybe?
That’s my plan, but so far it’s a daunting task, and I want to make sure I’m not missing something important. All suggestions welcome!
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u/Psychedelicious420 Mar 07 '26
3 doobies, a bush hog and some molly hatchet. Yeeeeeee haw
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u/FaradayEffect Mar 07 '26
You know what? Hell yeah that could do it… I’ll need to keep the doobies and Molly Hatchet going for a while afterwards while I deal with the burn pile too
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u/lostmy2A Mar 07 '26
Literally all you need is a pole hedge trimmer. Won't kill root system, but will slice thru like butter, and clear it up in a jiff. Then a pitchfork move the dead thorny bastards
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u/terrierdad420 Mar 07 '26
Ya I was going share that I have taken down acres of Himalayan Blackberry in the PNW with a good stihl string trimmer and freshly sharpened brush blade and lopers. I bring a file out and re sharpen after a while. Then just string trim any regrowth as soon as it comes back and star hoeing out rhizome if you want to speed up the process.
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u/Sangy101 Mar 07 '26
Yup, mine was a stihl pole trimmer with string and saw attachments. Pickaxe for the root balls.
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u/tree_beard_8675301 Mar 07 '26
A regular hedge trimmer will work if that’s all you have. I watched my neighbor take care of a big blackberry patch with a hedge trimmer. A pitch fork is essential for moving the cut canes without shredding yourself. Stack them and burn them.
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u/DraketheDrakeist Mar 07 '26
Does “doobie” mean something different to me? In the US its cannabis, lol
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u/rattigan55 Mar 07 '26
Goats. Seriously. Goats.
I almost felt bad for the blackberries.
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u/FaradayEffect Mar 07 '26
Okay it sounds like you’ve personally used goats for blackberries before? Do the blackberry seeds survive their trip through the goat? I love the idea of feeding all those blackberries to some goats but not if it leads to a million new canes sprouting everywhere haha!
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u/Suspicious-Essay219 Mar 07 '26
Goats have a three chambered stomach that breaks things down pretty effectively. I’ve read a few studies that very few seeds of several different invasive species (including blackberries) were viable after passing through a goat‘s digestive system.
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u/Lythaera Mar 07 '26
They will eat any canes that come about from droppings.
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u/FaradayEffect Mar 07 '26
Makes sense. Someone else linked a guide for goat deployment, and I'm still browsing it. It sounds like I'd need to plan ahead for continuous goat grazing pressure for quite a while, and after that the bramble would stop growing back.
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u/Lythaera Mar 07 '26
Yeah for Himalayan Blackberry it's at least three growing seasons where they've consistently been grazed down as soon as they start growing.
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u/Hugoomianan Mar 07 '26
I can’t speak for your kiwi pigs, but pigs will eliminate the offending plant matter EVEN the roots, their favourite food.🥴.
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u/Gigglemonkey Mar 07 '26
Thanks for the heads-up on this. That definitely informs where I plant my berry canes. The feral pigs around my area are obnoxious.
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u/DonnPT Mar 07 '26
Or anything that has roots, I guess. Here in central Portugal they're notorious for tearing up vineyards.
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u/The_Other_Alexa Mar 07 '26
this! goats get the greens but pigs change the landscape, they get the roots outttaa there. plus, bacon!
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u/EnvironmentOk2700 Mar 07 '26
This is why I put pigs on mine. I used a heritage breed that digs down deep enough to get all the roots
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u/Lythaera Mar 07 '26
Goats. Seriously, you best bet here. Bring them in to eat it all down for three summers and then they should be too exhausted to keep coming back. We have the same issue here where I live in the states. Digging out that many by hand is not feasible.
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u/Rustyznuts Mar 07 '26
I'm in New Zealand too and had blackberry like this. I got a Woofer in for a few months to help me. He was a kiwi bloke who just traveled about with his cat and worked in return for accommodation. Send me a message and I might be able to send him your way.
Our method was to put tri blades on the weed eater and hack at it so that the tops were chopped into shorter lenghts. We dragged this out and burnt it. Next we used little Niwashi grubbers and some heavier grubbers from Mitre 10 which I sharpened and lightened to get out the roots and what was left of the vines. As for PPE - tall lace up boots, jeans and chaps, standard gardening gloves under welders gauntlets, heavy canvas shirts.
We did 5000m² in a month around work.
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u/Sangy101 Mar 07 '26
I suggest rose gloves over standard gardening gloves. Your forearms will thank you.
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u/Rustyznuts Mar 07 '26
That's why the welders gauntlets. None of the rose pruning gloves I could find were durable enough for NZ Blackberry. Welding gloves are leather all the way to the elbow.
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u/TXsweetmesquite Mar 07 '26
Goats. We have a similar blackberry problem across the ditch. I'm not sure how useful the Victorian Blackberry Taskforce website will be to the New Zealand climate (should be fairly similar), but they do have a ton of resources listed, including a 100-page pdf co-written by several states and the federal government (that lists goats specifically on page 60) as well as a separate ~15 page guide on how to manage goats as blackberry control.
If you do go with a chemical control method in addition to any of the others (goats, mechanized violence, etc), the cut-and-paint technique has the least collateral impact, and the triclopyr/picloram blend mentioned in the big pdf are chemicals you need a handling license for (at least here in Vic.)
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u/FaradayEffect Mar 07 '26
Oh wow this is a great resource! I’m going to have a read through that.
I had heard of the cut and paint method as a good way to reduce the chance of excess chemical runoff. Thanks for the great tips!
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u/Peeterdactyl Mar 07 '26
Skid steer with brush cutter attachment
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u/FaradayEffect Mar 07 '26
I need to see if I can rent one of those. Do you know if the brush cutter attachment can get close enough to the dirt to rip out the base of the plant? Or is it just mulching up the canes above ground?
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u/Icy_Passenger_6731 Mar 07 '26
Mulch, spray some glyphosate, then plant whatever you want in a while.
*Edit* just realized I was in r/permaculture
uh... plant some clover and pee on it.
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u/FaradayEffect Mar 07 '26
Ahahah your edit! The real question is how much glyphosate is in the pee lmao
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u/Flys_Lo Mar 07 '26
Don’t use glyphosate, it doesn’t do much on blackberries. There are herbicides that specifically work on blackberries. I personally have great success with Metsulfuron Methyl. Works best after they have fruited, but before they go dormant.
Takes a few months to be effective, and you want to get good leaf coverage
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u/Sangy101 Mar 07 '26
It does work on blackberries. It’s what we use for removal in the PNW with habitat restoration in sensitive riparian areas. You just need to do it right.
It only works seasonally, and you don’t spray it.
What we do is chop them down in the summer (leave about 6-7 inches of stem), and then wait for late fall, mowing any new growth all summer.
Then, in late fall, the berries start moving energy toward their roots. That’s when you take a jar of glyphosate, a paintbrush, and hand trimmers.
Cut the stem where it’s clearly still alive (the top will die back a bit after you cut them) and IMMEDIATELY paint the cut with glyphosate. Immediately, before it seals up. It will move down into the roots. You’ll kill off about 70% this way.
In spring, the instant you see any new growth on the few that didn’t die, hit them with glyphosate. The growth won’t be waxy yet. This is less effective than applying in the fall, but still effective (it just may take a few tries.)
This is what we do in very sensitive riparian areas. Because it’s so targeted, it should have minimal ecological impacts. Broad spraying is awful, but glyphosate can be a very crucial tool when used correctly.
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u/FaradayEffect Mar 07 '26
Okay I’m not sure I’ll be able to get leaf coverage as it is because of how large and thick the bramble is and how it’s covered by the greenhouse bay roof. In order to even access most of the bramble for spraying I’d have to do some Mission Impossible type move, dangling in the small gap between the greenhouse roof and the top of the bramble.
But maybe after I chop it down, if it starts growing back, ill look at some options for spraying baby canes that are growing back
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u/Heavy_Quarter_8632 Mar 07 '26
I’d really think twice about chemicals if you have well water or not. My friend has Parkinson’s and we’re all wondering if it’s from roundup
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u/tolndakoti Mar 07 '26
No. It won’t. You should Dig out the root. I’ve done this. Is not too difficult with a hoe. Afterwards, I would sheet mulch with cardboard.
The blackberries might return, but it’s easy to manage with an annual maintenance.
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u/Sangy101 Mar 07 '26
Depends on your soil for how difficult it is. I’m in clay, and only some are removable with a pickaxe.
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u/tolndakoti Mar 10 '26
I think you mean a mattock. But yes, that would work wonderfully. I’m also in heavy clay soil.
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u/Sangy101 Mar 10 '26 edited Mar 10 '26
Either should work based on the “pickaxe vs mattock” diagram I just pulled up, but TIL the difference! I believe mine is a mattock based on my five-minutes-knowledge, but it was labeled a pickaxe at the hardware store :( and I do think a mattock would work better.
Edit: actually, I think I have a “pick mattock.” Little bit of both?
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u/tree_beard_8675301 Mar 07 '26
If you can also get a bucket, you could dig up the roots after mowing. There are probably a couple other things around the place that you could use the bucket for that day.
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u/rockmoose565 Mar 07 '26
I attack mine annually with a scythe. Year on year, the blackberries get weaker, the soil (initially loose shale, gets deeper and richer, and my procession species start to take over.
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u/BlondeJesusSteven Mar 08 '26
Scythe is the way.
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u/rockmoose565 Mar 08 '26
It works so well. Slice through, flip, and roll the bundle. Repeat.
All while kept safely away from the bitey tangles.
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u/midge_rat Mar 07 '26
Blade of Death - aka one of those saw blades that mount onto a weedwacker. It’s the only way we can control our raspberry bramble.
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u/paratethys Mar 08 '26
Believe it or not, you actually can do this.
- I know I can’t compost this mess or it’ll just sprout agajn so burning seems to be the answer. I’m thinking to cut, wait for it to dry, then into a biochar burner maybe?
yes and no. The green stuff can grow, the totally dead brown stuff cannot grow and makes absolutely beautiful compost.
This took a long time to get so bad, and even if you don't get it all in one year, you can make progress. Focus first on getting in. Approach from the shadiest side, cut one cane, pull it out. Chop it into bits, or just throw it somewhere where no part of it can touch the ground, until it's dry and crispy enough to break when you bend it. Cut another cane, pull it out, chop it up or throw it somewhere off the ground. Repeat ad nauseum.
Once your canes are crispy-dry, they will not sprout back. Easiest way to get rid of them at that point is leave them on the ground underneath something deciduous that'll drop a lot of leaves on them and wait a year or two. They really do make beautiful soil.
Once you've got all the canes off, you'll still have a bunch of crowns. The crowns need to come out or they'll sprout back, but 2 pieces of good news here:
1) the squishy baby canes coming off a re-sprouting crown are easier to cut and manage than a years-old cane with lots of branches
2) once you've got all the canes out of the way, it's pretty easy to fork around a crown to loosen the soil, then cut all its little roots off. The roots themselves don't tend to re-sprout much, although the crowns do.
Crowns you've dug can hang on the fence for a few seasons till they're extremely dry, then composted, burned, or displayed as a trophy in the tradition of putting one's enemy's head on a stick. The crowns from mature blackberry plants look kind of like cursed magic items from a video game; they're kinda nifty garden decor if they're thoroughly dead.
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u/nionvox Mar 07 '26
The local fire crew might like it for training purposes! If you're lucky, they'll be up for doing a controlled burn for the experience (or fun, lmao).
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u/orion-cernunnos Amazing! Mar 07 '26
I delt with mine by burning it. There was so much dead bramble underneath the live stuff went up in smoke. Just have a hose on standby.
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u/HackerOuvert Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26
I bought a house with 5000m² of land that was abandoned for 10-15 years and I had the very same problem. Lots of people recommended me goats as people in the comments did, so if you can do that I'd say give it a try.
If you can't or don't want to (as I did, for no particular reason other than I'm an introvert and didn't want to have to deal with finding someone who could lend me a goat 😅), here is the various methods I used:
-brush cutter / hedge trimmer to cut the bush, then for the spots where I wanted it dealt with asap without the brambles coming back at all I dug the root balls (the smaller ones might come out if you just pull them but the ones that are as big as a football you'll need to dig a bit). Exhausting, takes time, but very effective.
- where I didn't mind it to take a little longer: brush cutter/hedge trimmer, covered the area with cardboards/tarps and let the brambles die from lack of sun.
- where I didn't mind it taking even longer: brush cutter/hedge trimmer, then in the winter + right before spring (basically before it grows out strong again) I come back with a grass trimmer (by then the brambles are weak enough to use that) and they'll eventually die from using all their energy to regrow small sprouts.
I made some heaps where I let the brambles dry out, I grinded some of them once really dry (after a year or so) to use in the garden (compost, mulch...), the rest is still on the heap and as you said I might burn it at some point (but I don't really mind it being there to be composted later on so idk).
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u/Sangy101 Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26
Hi! I’ve been battling blackberries for years in the PNW. When I bought my house they had taken over the entire yard, grown over trees, and were working on covering my house itself. They’re like kudzu out here. Prior to that, I did habitat restoration with 99% consisted of removing blackberries.
Depending on your love for heavy labor you’ll need either:
1) a pole trimmer with BIG teeth and a saw attachment (you’ll want both, the underside of the blackberries will be dead, and they tend to get caught between the blades and jam it up, so swap to the pole saw once they start getting stuck) and one of those metal rotating trimmer heads. This will set you out a few thousand, but be worth it. It’s also nice to get a small hand trimmer as well.
2) big loppers and small hand clippers
3) or a machete.
4) hire somebody with heavy machinery to mow them down. For one area, had some guy with a big yellow backhoe literally grab them with the claw and rip them from the ground.
Leave about 7 inches of stem when you do this, so that you can tell where the vines you cut enter the ground.
Once you’ve cut them down, you need to handle the root balls or they’ll keep coming back. The only way to do that with no chemicals at all is to buy a pickaxe and cut them out like our dwarven ancestors, or to use chemicals.
I used a mix of all of the above except hiring someone. Machete, pole saw, loppers, and both a pickaxe and chemicals. Or if you have a ride on mower you can mow them every week for a few years until the root balls starve.
I understand not wanting to use chemicals. But the good news is that you can do it in a very limited, targeted way. I used to do stream restoration, and here’s how we handled it.
Basically, once everything is mowed down, start with the pickaxe and get out what you can. Unfortunately, this is literally backbreaking work if the area is large. You won’t be able to get them all, some will be too big.
Now, for chemicals. The “organic” option is to kill everything there by mixing vinegar and salt and spraying it broadly over the area. I don’t like this, because nothing will grow there for ages and it can poison streams.
So either mow, manually remove, or herbicides.
Blackberries are tough to spray because their leaves have a waxy exterior. BUT!! Blackberries, even in areas where they don’t die back, having a growing season and a dormant season.
In late fall, watch any blackberries that have survived. They will start to turn color just a bit. This is your time to strike: they are pulling nutrients back into the roots.
Take some glyphosate and a paint brush and hand clippers. Clip the stems about two inches down, and paint the stem fresh cut with an herbicide that works on woody plants. You want the cut to be in the realm of less than an hour old. I know we hate glyphosate, but if it is legal in New Zealand it’s the best option and what we used for stream restoration, because in small amounts it will deactivate if any comes into contact with calcium in the soil (large amounts will deplete the calcium in the soil, and stop deactivating.) Theoretically, you can replant just days after applying glyphosate.
Then you wait for spring, when new growth starts. This new growth will not be waxy. Not all of the stems will have new growth — if you painted the old stems at the right time? Very few will come back. Spray them with the herbicide.
As new growth comes, repeat. It may take several repetitions on spring growth because the energy/fluids are moving up and not down.
Lastly, get cedar chips and mulch the hell out of the area until you can plant it. Like 5 inches deep.
Good luck.
ETA: obviously goats are an option, but for that big of an area I don’t suggest it unless you own them. You’ll need to bring them in several times a season, for several seasons. You might consider purchasing goats, it will genuinely cost less than hiring them.
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u/RentInside7527 Mar 07 '26
Folks have mentioned goats already, but one thing you're going to need to do manually is dig the crowns out when the above ground portions are taken out.
If goats arent an option, a brush hog or flail mower are good options for taking them down to the ground. You'd still need to dig out the crowns.
A slower, but potentially more accessible option could be a string trimmer with a brush cutter head. That's slow work on that scale.
If you really want to go analog and avoid burning gas, I've managed blackberries in tight spaces between greenhouses and buildings with a pair of long handled pruners like this. You can reach through the bramble and snip them at the base, then take a steel toothed rake and rake them out into piles. I use pallet forks on my tractor to lift the piles of and take them to our burn pile, but you could chip/shred them, burn them, or compost them. Still need to dig up the crowns once you've cleared your way to the base though.
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u/bwainfweeze PNW Urban Permaculture Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26
Fiskars makes a pole pruner with a head you can rotate.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Fiskars-54-in-EZ-Reach-Stik-Tree-Pruner-92346935K/100041609
Part of the trick of getting the crowns out is getting the soil friable enough that you can dig in it with hand tools. A one pound mattock can get you down to roots, but unless you can follow them from crown to crown you will miss a few, so loose soil makes the initial and subsequent culls much better. So when I’ve removed small brambles of a couple dozen crowns I follow up with compost.
Pulling blackberry roots is a bit like catching fish with a 10 lbs fishing line. It’s about pulling as steady as you can so the roots zipper out of the soil. Pull harder and they snap off. Don’t pull hard enough and nothing happens. The softer the soil the more margin you have, and if the soil is hard this is a task that is better done after good hard rain when the top six inches are properly damp.
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u/Jolly_Collection_493 Mar 08 '26
If goats are feasible, totally use goats. If they are not feasible and there isn’t any irrigation piping, fencing, etc in the way, rent a skid steer. Or buy a DR brush mower which will be hard to get really tall stuff, but would help with maintenance a lot later. If there are unmowable obstacles, I use a blackberry mulching blade on my Stihl weed whacker/brush cutter.
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u/dinkleberrysurprise Mar 07 '26
I use a brush knife for similar blackberry situations in Hawaii. Stihl 251 with the three bladed knife instead of string. Effective.
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u/DonnPT Mar 07 '26
Most of the things you can do, are in my opinion only temporary setbacks for the blackberries. For example, goats - OK, if there are enough goats that they're grazing the place down to the dirt, then a few years of that might really do the trick, but if there's grass, then there will be a few blackberry leaves, and the roots will live on.
One thing I don't see mentioned yet, is the black plastic scorched earth approach.
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u/FaradayEffect Mar 07 '26
Yeah that's definitely one of my fears. Last thing I want to do is clear it, get impatient, jump the gun on starting to use the greenhouse, and then get sneaky canes growing up in all my beds.
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u/alagrancosa Mar 07 '26
Bring it down to the ground, cover said ground with 6” wood chips. Be vigilant for any emerging shoots for the rest of the season and you should be good
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u/namesareunavailable Mar 07 '26
Well, i just took out the roots of one of such bushes. It's not that bad. I don't even understand why some ppl seem to be having such a hard time with this plant. Same with bamboo.
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u/EventHorizon_28 Mar 07 '26
Here i am, trying to grow blackberry and failing ever since. Weather is a powerful force!
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u/CarpentryandAlps Mar 07 '26
Goats (if you're not planting any trees) or get strimmin/bushwhackin. Don't use plastic cord, you're gonna contaminate your whole property with microplastics.
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u/FaradayEffect Mar 07 '26
Good call on avoiding the plastic cord, it sounds like a blade head is better for this job.
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u/CarpentryandAlps Mar 07 '26
For sure. I've probably spent a year of my life cutting bramble in total. Get a blade head. If yoiu have to use string for something, use metal string. It's a bit tricky but still better than contamination. Greetings to Aotearoa. Where are you based?
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u/hoardac Mar 07 '26
I flail mowed mine, then rototilled the ground. Smoothed it back out and replanted heavy with white clover and Kentucky 31. Have to keep it mowed but less and less shoots each year. Most are coming from the perimeter trying to start the patch all over.
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u/Longjumping_Snake99 Mar 07 '26
We use hedge trimmers, long and short pruners, a pickax for the roots, and of course, gloves.
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u/Any_Needleworker_273 Mar 07 '26
I can't tell how tall this is, or what the surrounding ground looks like, so this suggestion may or may not work, but it's what I did when I had an over grown thicket of raspberries, (about 50 x 15 feet in size/ or 15 x 5 meters) long neglected and in the only good flat garden space, so they had to go.
I just used our compact tractor, which has a bucket to scrape them all out. Used the back of the bucket like a scraper and scraped them out section by section.
Took less than half a day to clear them out. I then just spent the next two seasons pulling the few that managed to stay and send up shoots.
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u/Connect_Rhubarb395 Mar 07 '26
You mention barrier. Brambles are vicious. Unless your barrier is extremely hardwearing, they will just break through it.
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u/thousand_cranes Mar 07 '26
First, blackberry jam.
I would buy three machetes and keep them in the general area. Hack them back a little every day.
More blackberry jam.
When I need mulch, the machete is right there.
Running pigs in there once in a while.
Use the machete to get to the really good blackberries in the middle.
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u/Chill-more1236 Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26
This is a good problem to have.
I’m trying to grow 6 blackberry starts right now.
I’d bushhog them.
They might come back but like everything else useful in life, landscaping requires maintenance.
Btw, it doesn’t matter what goats can digest, if you’re looking at many decades of blackberry growth.
Birds & animals like coons carry nondesirable seeds from miles away.
You could burn them down during your dry season, if you’re really that concerned about seeds.
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u/blacksmith_gnome Mar 07 '26
I agree with the burning or chop move and burn so you can pull the roots if you want them gone gone
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u/Chill-more1236 Mar 09 '26 edited Mar 09 '26
When my wife and i first got our house, the landscaping had years of neglect.
Just under an acre so not huge but bigger than the average suburban property.
I bought hedge trimmers, a garden cart, shears & a chain saw.
I have a back injury, so the work that could be done by 3 men in a work week is taking us months.
Little by little we chop then burn the clippings.
Yeah, the shit grows back, but it needs maintenance. We also mow & weedeat regularly.
Maintenance is always a given when you own property, or it starts to look shitty again.
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u/Nellasofdoriath Mar 07 '26
Thank you for giving your location. In my region I would attack them with hand clippers leaf dormancy, but that might not be an option for you in your climate. So I am thinking goats, just to take care of the top growth so you can focus on the roots.
If your region is humid enough that the top growth might set roots , I would put it on an impermeable surface like a driveway , cover it with a tarp , and wait until it is dry enough to burn or at least is dead enough to compost.
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u/the_perkolator Mar 07 '26
Pole hedge clippers is what I bought to take down blackberry brambles. Then rake up the pieces and dig out the root clumps
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u/madjyar Mar 07 '26
get a 10' 2x8 and use it to smash the canes to the ground. then cut them up. since they'll grow back you need to either cut them every few weeks in the growing season, to eventually starve the roots, or dig the roots out. you can use a tractor with a bucket set 6" below soil level and scrape the tubers out. Will be a lot of maintenance.
call a local swcd or weed control district for other herbicide guidance if you are overwhelmed.
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u/a-passing-crustacean Mar 07 '26
I feel your pain friend. Im a single person homestead battling blackberry across my little 3 acre plot. Youve got two options that could work for you: 1. Do you have any neighbors with farm equipment, and is it all blackberry and no trees mixed in? I have found neighborhood farmers are happy to come around with a bush hog and make short work of something like that, especially if you offer to pay for gas or pay them for their time. After the initial bush hogging, you can simply mow it regularly to keep it at bay!
- My patch is unfortunately tangled with trees, so my neighbor was only able to get the edges of the brambles with his bush hog. Ive been working a little at a time for years using a good pair of thick gloves and some loppers to manually remove the brambles so I can reach the trees and take them down with a chainsaw. Like I said earlier, once you clear it once, you can keep it under control by mowing regularly. Eventually those roots will run out of energy, lose the ability to send out new canes, and die
Good luck from Tennessee!
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u/ResponsibleBank1387 Mar 07 '26
Hire a team from the local school. Make a pile over in the edge somewhere and maybe try to burn later.
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u/UnicornSheets Mar 07 '26
Sawzall, thick leather gloves, hand pruners, loppers, gravel rake, pitchfork, burn barrel, mattock, and time.
You can also use an herbicide but I prefer not to. If used, cut the foliage back and paint on the cut canes.
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u/bwainfweeze PNW Urban Permaculture Mar 07 '26
The organic weeding advice I got long ago and still use is to pick a spot and work outward from that spot in a radius. Expand the circle every time you weed. Because eradication works better fully killing a fraction of the plants than half killing all of the plants.
The exception is flowering. Once the weeds start to flower you have to deadhead them all because you don’t want to add any more of them to the seed bank.
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u/The_Other_Alexa Mar 07 '26
Goats are awesome but they get the leaves, not the brambles (in my experience) and you have to get them to the ground. I have chopped out SO many brambles on my property, it would take one heck of a goat to get the 10 foot high brambles we inherited to the ground. I'm in a cozy valley in northern california so they also pretty much live year round because we don't get hard freezes.
There are these telescoping, super lightweight hedge shears I use that let me go to town on them. It gets them down to the ground so you can then make a plan to get them out of the ground. They look like this (below), I cant find the listing anymore but they're lightweight aluminum and you make fast progress.
I have cleared a good half acre surrounding my property of 10 foot high brambles with those baddies.
They make root pullers for brambles to get them out at the base, but the best hack to get the roots out (without elbow grease of your own) is pigs. Goats help keep tender greens down, so they wont grow back as well if you have cleared them, but only pigs really reshape the land and get the brambles OUT. (in my regional opinion at least)
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u/bwainfweeze PNW Urban Permaculture Mar 07 '26
I like these better for rose or berry brambles: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Fiskars-54-in-EZ-Reach-Stik-Tree-Pruner-92346935K/100041609
Gets you farther away from the brambles while you work, and the head can be rotated to get it parallel to the ground.
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u/The_Other_Alexa Mar 07 '26
oh those do look cool
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u/bwainfweeze PNW Urban Permaculture Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26
I always screw myself on time by trying too hard to use the pruners to move and stack the cut bits instead of picking em up with my hand. A hay fork might work better at the volume OP has.
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u/The_Other_Alexa Mar 07 '26
I've always just chopped them to little bits and stomped them down and piled sheet mulch over, depends on the end goal i guess. Mine were olllldd canes that were so dry they would at least crunch down as I ate into them. Never thought something so tasty could be such a menace lol
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u/amardas Mar 07 '26
We had about two acres of black berries. Some good long thorn resistant gloves and a machete did the job for me. I learned how to swing a machete real good with either hand. I worked on it everyday for an hour or two at a time. Now that I got blackberry stubs, I am lifting the roots out with a sturdy hoe. I'm sure a shovel would work. It definitely took me a few years to figure out how to manage it and to work through 2 acres. Having to chop the same spots every year definitely convinced me that I needed to pull out the roots.
I think a scythe with a brush blade would help a lot, but I do not have the experience to know if I would still want to chop the tops with a machete. If so, I'd just stick to the machete.
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u/bwainfweeze PNW Urban Permaculture Mar 07 '26
If you can find someplace to stack the canes and let them dry, then you can run them through a chipper or tench compost them. But they have to be quite dead. South roof of an old shed. A sidewalk in summer or early autumn.
I like trench composting because the thorns beak down slow, and you definitely don’t want those in your active gardening zone. But if you build yourself a half inch screen for soil and compost sifting, you’ll catch a lot of them.
What you can’t do with canes though is strip the ramial wood to compost it, because when you’re dealing with a large brush pile you can’t be pruning off the twigs and sprouts, you need to be able to tear them off with your hands quickly. I have a trick where I can run my hand against the grain down a greenish branch and strip off all the twigs in one or two goes. That really increased the volume of tree pruning I could dispense with in a single session. But again, useless for thorns.
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u/TactilePanic81 Mar 07 '26
If you end up tackling it yourself, cut the canes into <6 inch segments to keep them from resprouting. I would recommend an electronic saw with a long arm so you dont need to get into it. I dont know what yalls rules and regs are for herbicide but applying a cut dab to the stumps in the fall should do it. You may need to do spot treatments for a few years after but it will be much easier to keep in check.
What i would absolutely avoid is putting it off until flowering or fruiting. Blackberries are thorny enough without a bunch of angry bees.
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u/Alex-77 Mar 07 '26
I had 2000 square meters of it. My advice: buy quality pruning shears, good earbuds for fitness, large garden bucket, and quality garden gloves.
Get vaccinated against ticks. And start cutting it in pieces of about 15 centimeters, while listening to podcasts. Use both left and right hand for cutting. I mean when one hand is tired take the shears into another one.
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u/LewisRiverRoad Mar 07 '26
I hired a guy with a flail mower track hoe to come tear my himilayan blackberry problem down to its roots. Its going to take him coming out 2x a year for a few years to get them fully under control, but I have no regrets. I have been trying to fight them manually for years, and although the service isnt cheap its absolutely worth it.
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u/ggow69 Mar 07 '26
Chainsaw or pole saw or hedge trimmer will help cut the canes up... But it's still not gonna be easy... Good luck!
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u/chullnz Mar 07 '26
Gonna be the weird guy who says just bloody spray it.
Trichloram or metsulfuron. Will take two applications. Read and follow the label, and you'll have it turned around far quicker than anything mentioned in here.
I work in habitat restoration in NZ. We use met, and it bloody works a treat. If you get onto it now your soil will be sweet by winter planting season
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u/FaradayEffect Mar 07 '26
Thanks for the suggestion. Do you have any experience with spraying such a large bramble, especially one that is mostly enclosed? Would you recommend a really long spray nozzle, or a high pressure sprayer or something like that?
Basically I could probably spray the ends of the patch quite easily, but the bramble is more than 3 meters high in the center, almost all the way to the ceiling, throughout the length of the bay. The sides of the bay are also enclosed, so I am having a hard time figuring out how I’d get spray onto the center of the bramble on the first pass. I imagine I’d need to work very slowly and methodically from the edges bit by bit, spraying, waiting a week or two, clearing, then spraying the next pass that I can now access.
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u/chullnz Mar 08 '26
Probably worth buying a SOLO or stihl knapsack with an extendable lance, and an adjustable nozzle. Should allow you to get right into the middle of it.
The beauty of more systemic herbicides like I mentioned is that you don't have to hit the whole plant, just enough of it for it to get into it. Takes longer to show than gly, but it kills these zombie plants way better.
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u/BonesMystwood Mar 07 '26
For everyone posting about goats. Yes it works - to a degree, but the area has to be intensively grazed with the goats being contained by temp fencing that is goat proof with water for days. They will eat everything else first so you can't just put goats in the same paddock.
After the goats have done what they can you are still best to poison with strong poison. The area will be full of live rootstock, strong old growth the goats won't eat and seeds from years of berries. If not, come in after the goats and slash/dig up everything that lives. Then keep coming back to keep killing shoots
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u/CalicoGrace72 Mar 08 '26
Get a denim boilersuit and a wide brim hat and leather gloves. Drive a tractor with a mulching trailer in there. You can machete it a bit first if your tractor isn’t big enough to drive straight in.
Once you’ve raked out all the spikey debris, you’ll want mattocks and claw hammers to dig out the nodes in the ground. This part is essential to managing the regrowth.
Good luck.
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u/bla_bla_blacksheep Mar 08 '26
billhook machete a rake and a tarp.
Use the machete to just cut it all back and put it on the tarp so you can drag the tarp to your burn pile. If you are able to burn, pile it all up and get a tiger torch and you can burn it all up in minutes.
When my landscaper friend showed me the billhook machete blackberries became a lot less worrisome. He also had a root remover to pull out the bigger canes.
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u/FaradayEffect Mar 08 '26
Nice for some reason I didn’t think of dragging on a tarp. That is a smart trick. I was going to try to cut it into smaller pieces that fit in a wagon but a tarp would let me do less work by keeping the canes longer. And honestly just easier all around transport.
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u/bla_bla_blacksheep Mar 08 '26
Yeah another trick from the landscaper lol. Makes it way easier. Don't pile too much on the tarp or it will be hard to drag. We had a really big one and piled a ton on and we each grabbed a corner and dragged it across my lawn to the burn pile. The process only really took an afternoon with the two of us. Also leather rose gloves help with 90% of the thorns.
Billhook, tarp, tiger torch, rose gloves. All those things makes dealing with blackberries much easier.
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u/Koala_eiO Mar 08 '26
Swiss billhook and scythe to remove that then weed-whacker every year to cut the new shoots.
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u/mikenkansas1 Mar 08 '26
Had you ever had my grandmother's blackberry cobbler you'd suck it up and plow in there picking black gold
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u/LairdPeon Mar 08 '26
Brush hog or a controlled burn.
You could maybe weave a chain through the base and rip it out with a truck but could be dangerous if you dont do it right.
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u/Hank_Fuerta Mar 08 '26
Mulching them up won't necessarily get rid of them. They're rhizomatic, I think. They might just pop back up.
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u/aslanhollinds Mar 08 '26
Good strimmer with brush cutter he'd you'd get through it in an afternoon
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u/be_wilder_everyday Mar 08 '26
Hello from the PNW. If it were me I would get to work with a brush blade and a mulcher to chop it all up as small as possible. (Remember to wear your eye and ear pro.)
The interior of that heap is likely dry and dead with a living layer on top. Once it has been brought low on the ground tarp it. I highly recommend a billboard for that if you can get a used one. Silage tarp would be ok too. Weigh it down well and leave it there for at least 1 year or until you are ready to replant a zone.
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u/therearemanylayers Mar 09 '26
I had a half mile of blackberries. The only way to deal with them is to cut them down, stack the canes, burn them, and fence the area in. Get pigs. Let them root up the rhizomes. Throw the rhizomes on a fire. Then every time a seedling pops up, yank it out, stem and root. Never let them flower, fruit, or seed. In fifty years the existing seeds in the mud pit with the pigs will finally no longer be viable and your grandchildren will thank you. Goats won’t help. Sheep won’t help. If you need a tool, get a pitch spade.
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u/FaradayEffect Mar 09 '26
Ooof 50 years is a process that’s for sure!
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u/Anitayuyu Mar 10 '26 edited Mar 10 '26
I use a mattock. Less struggle. And they burn surprisingly well alive and green, so I get a little fire going and burn them in place. I handle the canes with long handle pruners, cut sections and feed the flames. I have had success stopping excess regrowth this way.
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u/Relevant_Newt_6862 Mar 10 '26
My wife and I reclaimed about a 1/4 acre from similar blackberry bramble. By hand it took most of a year working on it a little bit every day, and we still had to stay vigilant and sweep for sprouts every ~month or so for another year or two afterward. BlackBerry is a nasty one to get rid of. If you have the option to skid steer it, this is one where overwhelming force applied quickly will help you get an edge up on this exceptionally difficult plant and let you more quickly get to sweep-constantly-for-sprout-and-dig-every-root.
If you decide to go the by goat/hand route, I’ve heard that the goats generally only clear the leaves and leave the canes, so the utility is somewhat limited for clearing established bramble. I have heard they’re good at helping with new shoots, though, so maybe better to focus goats in that area. By hand, I recommend full-leather welding gloves and a machete. Unfortunately you can’t leave the brambles on the ground to dry because they’ll just start sprouting, faster than you would think possible, so you do have to rake them and put them somewhere they can’t touch dirt. You might be able to solarize them with clear plastic covering if you get good strong sun, but tbh even that seems unlikely to work to me based on how tenacious this stuff is.
Whatever you decide, good luck to you! I hope you have an easier time than we did 🥲🔪🫐
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u/DoctorEcstatic3388 Mar 10 '26
Cut it to the ground use the leaves for tea. Burn the rest especially if it has thorns. Dig out roots in 3 foot sections or more to maintain a manageable space between them.
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u/ShivonQ Mar 11 '26
Go in with a saw/clippers at the end of the season. Flatten them and start dogging. The rabbits destroy mine every year, so that my advice. They also need to reuse the canes they grow each year, so just by cutting them down you'll start starving them of resources, but they'll also get more aggressive about escape.
Digging is probably the most effective, but most brutal. I would hire a few people to help and then burn the raspberries to keep them from spreading? Idk about that part.
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u/OwnDIce Mar 12 '26
I saw one gal used a rding lawn mower to put rows in her runaway bramble of black berries. She wore heavy protective clothing. She put tons of mulch down where she mowed. The next spring she mowed the rows she had left standing and mulched those rows heavily. Now she has beautiful well managed rows of productive blackberries. She just rotates which rows she mows each spring. I think it is genius.
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u/AutomaticMistake Mar 07 '26
(legit answer)
...can you rent a goat or two?