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Hey, what about thornless blackberries -- they're great for food and beauty. One of my favorite
times of the gardening year is picking blackberries when they become ripe. Just look at these
-- they are just gorgeous, and so delicious. This particular variety of blackberry is called
Ouachita, and it's prized for its large berries and the fact that the canes are thornless.
And this year they're loaded with berries. But I will tell you this: If you grow berries,
you wanna make sure that the time leading up until they begin to ripen -- you wanna
make sure the soil stays consistently moist. Because we went through a dry period, were
we got very little rain. And you can see, some of the berries on the end didn't fully
develop -- these actually got very dry, which is not a good thing. Now, we planted these
from bare root canes in the late winter. You can buy blackberries in pots at your local
garden center in the spring. And if you get some of these varieties that are named after
Indian tribes, like, Ouachita or Navajo or Arapaho, these things produce lots of big,
juicy berries. And I like to harvest them in a shallow basket like this, because they're
so big and juicy, if you stack them up on top of one another they get get smushed -- you
don't want that delicious juice leaking out. And one of the things I also like to do is
freeze them. If we can't get around to making jam, we'll just roll these berries out on
a cookie sheet, pop them in the freezer, let them freeze solid, and then dump them into
gallon freezer bags and leave them in the freezer until you're ready to make the jam.
And I also like to cut stems of blackberries like this, because integrating these into
flower arrangements can be a really unique way to use them. I'm actually gonna these
berries in and integrate them with a beautiful Dahlia that just started flowering. If you're
enjoying these tips on how to grow some of your own food and live a more beautiful life,
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