As a lifetime gardener in Wisconsin, I’ve learned firsthand how the right companion plants can transform a blackberry patch from ordinary to extraordinary. By strategically combining blackberries with plants that enhance flavor, deter pests, and beautify your berry garden, you can create a bountiful space that nourishes wildlife as much as it does your table. In this guide tailored to Wisconsin growing conditions, you’ll discover how to boost your berry harvest through imaginative companion planting.
Contents
Understanding Companion Planting
Companion planting is the practice of growing different plants to benefit each other. This time-tested gardening technique uses how plants interact below and above the soil surface. Well-matched plant partners can improve flavor, enhance pollination, smother weeds, repel pests, or attract beneficial insects like ladybugs and lacewings. With thoughtful pairings suited to your USDA Hardiness Zone, you can create symbiotic plant communities that primarily care for themselves.
Benefits of Companion Planting with Blackberries
Mixing the right companion plants with your blackberries delivers a broad spectrum of perks:
Improved Soil Quality and Nutrient Sharing
By combining deep-rooted blackberries with onions, leeks, and other shallow-rooted companions, more soil volume gets aerated and nourished. Legumes like beans and peas host nitrogen-fixing bacteria that enrich the surrounding soil for the benefit of blackberries. Dynamic accumulators like comfrey mine nutrients from the subsoil and concentrate them in leaves that make excellent mulch or compost around your canes.
Natural Pest and Disease Control
Strategically planted flowers like nasturtiums and calendulas lure aphid-eating ladybugs, while aromatic herbs like chives and sage repel blackberry pests with their strong scents. Interplanting blackberries with disease-resistant vegetables like asparagus can limit the spread of soil-borne pathogens. A diverse planting mix attracts helpful birds that feast on berry-loving insects and larvae.
Enhanced Pollination Prospects
You can increase fruit sets and yields by surrounding blackberry blossoms with pollinator-friendly flowers like bee balm, coneflower, and lavender. Planting native Midwestern prairie plants like Liatris, Monarda, and Pycnanthemum guarantees your patch will be abuzz with busy native pollinators like mason bees and bumblebees.
Mutual Growth Support
Vining crops like pole beans readily climb blackberry canes, using them as natural trellises while fixing nitrogen in the soil. Low-growing shade lovers like hostas and ferns flourish under the blackberries’ late-summer canopy, helping to conserve soil moisture. Sturdy sunflower stalks give emerging blackberry canes physical support against winds and storms.
Aesthetic and Biodiversity Advantages
A thoughtfully designed blackberry companion garden bursts with multi-season appeal and supports complex, interdependent wildlife networks. Spring bulbs like daffodils give way to summery borders of coreopsis and gaillardia surrounding lush blackberry bushes. Songbirds nest in mature canes, while butterflies flit between nectar-rich blossoms. The ecological richness of your small-scale edible landscape mirrors the dazzling diversity found in Wisconsin’s native woodlands and prairies.
Best Companion Plants for Blackberry Bushes
Now that you understand the mechanics behind planting blackberry companions let’s explore some specific plant pairings that work beautifully in Wisconsin gardens.
Floral Friends: Marigolds & Nasturtiums
Cheery marigolds and nasturtiums lend bold colors while warding off common blackberry pests. Marigolds’ pungent roots exude thiophenes, natural insecticides that fend off nematodes and other soil-dwellers. Trellised nasturtium vines repel aphids, whiteflies, and squash bugs that plague berries. As edible flowers, both make tasty garnishes for summer salads and desserts. Plant marigold and nasturtium seeds or transplants 1 to 2 feet from blackberry bushes for efficient pest control.
Herbal Companions: Sage & Rosemary
Fragrant Mediterranean herbs repel harmful insects while enhancing the flavor of nearby edibles like blackberries. Antifungal rosemary improves soil balance and protects against crown rot fungi. Its light blue blossoms attract tiny pollinators like solitary bees and hoverflies. Piney, silver-leafed sage contains thujone, which deters cabbage moths, aphids, and beetles. As woody shrubs, give sage and rosemary ample elbow room in your berry patch.
Agricultural Accomplices: Tomatoes & Peppers
As heat-loving plants, tomatoes and peppers thrive alongside blackberries under Wisconsin’s intense summer sun. Tomatoes’ extensive root systems improve soil tilth, while peppers’ pungent capsaicin compounds fend off pests. Both produce earlier and longer when shaded by blackberry foliage. For robust pollination, grow heirloom varieties with intriguing bi-colored or striped fruits. Train peppers up stakes or cages near thornless blackberry varieties.
Big Bloomers: Sunflowers & Bee Balm
Soaring sunflowers and bushy bee balm attract crowds of pollinators while anchoring your berry patch visually. Majestic sunflower stalks provide sturdy climbing structures for blackberry runners. Dwarf varieties like ‘Sunspot’ work well along garden margins. Bee balms bloom from summer through fall in shades of red, pink, and purple, tempting hummingbirds and butterflies. Remember, both spread vigorously, so allow ample room between plants.
Plants to Avoid Around Blackberries
While most herbs and flowers enhance berry harvests through harmonious symbiosis, a few companion plants compete with or harm blackberries. Careful garden design and plant selection can circumvent these potential pitfalls.
Competitive Clashes: Walnuts & Conifers
All parts of black walnut trees release natural juglone toxins that inhibit sensitive plants like blackberries, apples, and tomatoes. Size up existing trees before planting berries or other edibles within their 50-60-foot root zone radius. Conifers like white pines, spruces, and firs threaten blackberries through moisture deprivation and acidic needle buildup. If existing pines shade your planting area, amend the soil with calcitic lime to neutralize acidity before installing berries.
Hungry Herbivores: Brambles & Bermuda Grass
Vigorous berries like raspberries readily outcompete trailing blackberries for water, nutrients, and sunlight. Invasive Bermuda and quack grasses overwhelm berry patches with dense mats of roots and foliage. Maintain vigorous growth by feeding and mulching your berries properly and vigilantly weed out intruders as they appear. Surround berries with thick pine bark or gravel mulch borders to deter encroaching grasses and weeds.
Disease Promoters: Nightshades & Currants
Eggplants, potatoes, peppers, and tomatoes carry many of the same pathogens that afflict blackberries, including verticillium wilt and tobacco mosaic viruses. Gooseberry and red currant bushes host white pine blister rust spores that attack brambles. Since disease prevention is much easier than treatment, banish nightshades and risky berries from your immediate planting area. Instead, work them into proper crop rotations every 2-3 years in outlying vegetable beds.
Companion Planting Layout & Design Ideas
A well-designed companion planting scheme maximizes positive plant interactions while minimizing competition and pest habitat. Now, let’s explore layout options offering aesthetic appeal and functional symbiosis.
Organizing Your Berry Patch
Good companion planting design harnesses your chosen plant partners’ unique growth habits and behaviors. First, group plants according to size and spacing requirements. Position tall backdrop plants like sunflowers and sweet corn along the patch’s northern margin to avoid shading berries. Site mid-level plants with similar cultural needs together in parallel bands, such as tomato vines caged alongside thornless blackberries. Underplant low-growing shade lovers like impatiens and begonias appreciate filtered light and moisture.
Vertical Integration: Stacking Levels
Exploit vertical air space for increased yields from edibles and ornamentals. Install sturdy 8-foot trellises down each long side of your berry patch. Train pole beans, cucumbers, ornamental gourds, or Malabar spinach up these structures, with berries filling the center aisle. Compact teepees constructed from 5-foot willow or bamboo poles work nicely for vine crops like winter squash and peas. Surround these vertical elements with low-maintenance rambling plants like pumpkins, Armenian cucumbers, and nasturtiums.
Intercropping: Mix & Match Plant Partners
Skillful interplanting keeps your berry patch producing non-stop from spring through fall. Succession plants heat-loving basil, dill, and cilantro seedlings between berry mounds to harvest before the oppressive summer heat hits. Tuck in lettuce, kale, spinach, and other excellent season greens nearby to crop during spring and fall when brambles are dormant. Edge your patch with hardy perennial culinary herbs like thyme, sage, oregano, and chives for year-round harvest.
Companion Plant Care Through the Seasons
Attentive care and feeding keep your thoughtfully designed berry patch at peak capacity. Let’s explore seasonal maintenance essentials for symbiotic success.
Spring Renewal
Early spring is prime time for patch expansion and fortifying soil fertility. Plant berry runners in freshly prepared raised mounds enriched with aged manure, alfalfa meal, and mycorrhizae fungi to hasten root establishment. Surround berries with 2-3 inches of pine fines or shredded oak leaves to regulate moisture and temperature while suppressing weeds. Install vertical supports and trellises for vining companions like pole beans and cucumbers.
Summer Vigilance
The growing season’s long days demand diligent attention to watering, pest control, and training vines. Monitor soil moisture weekly, watering berries deeply as the fruit ripens. Handpick insect pests early and often to avoid infestations, squashing eggs, and larvae underfoot. Guide wandering vines gently onto trellises to prevent breakage and keep aisles clear. Pinch back wayward companions like mint and lemon balm to maintain vigor.
Fall Transition
As plants enter dormancy in autumn, focus efforts on preserving soil health. Prune back berries’ spent floricanes once fruiting concludes. Chop down finished annuals at the base, leaving root systems intact to replenish soil organic matter. Boost overwintering perennials like sages and thymes by topdressing beds with aged compost. Add a fresh layer of oak leaf mulch 4-6 inches deep to conserve warmth and moisture.
Conclusion
Thoughtfully combining blackberries with versatile companion plants tailored to your growing conditions delivers impressive rewards for little added effort. This symbiotic gardening strategy greatly expands your berry patch’s productivity, beauty, and resilience without increasing maintenance needs. I encourage you to experiment with the flexible growing guidelines presented here. Soon, you’ll discover excellent plant partnerships that empower you to grow food and habitat in exciting new ways.
