CHECKING BLACKBERRY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 April 1939, Page 8

CHECKING BLACKBERRY

COMMON CONTROL METHODS. Blackberry is generally attacked with the slasher or plowing machine, comments a writer in an exchange. Continual cutting will destroy the pest, but generally it takes a long time and is then only accomplished with the aid of a good sole of grass. Grubbing does more harm to blackberry than cutting, but it is not so effective on this plant as on gorse. Nevertheless, it probably spould be more regularly employed. Heavy harrowing damages blackberry, for it lacerates the stems and is an easy and quick method of attacking blackberry a foot or so high in "a pasture. Whatever method of attack is used, success will not be secured unless the grass pasture is encouraged by top-drpssing. Wherever the pasture is very poor, or where it docs not exist, it pays, if possible, to plough blackberry infested areas. Two or three ploughings with or without crops between will, with the cultivation, eradicate almost all of the blackberry. Cultivation should aim to bring the old • blackberry roots to the surface, whore they can be dried and burnt or carted away. When the ground is clean, permanent pasture can be sown. Sheep can keep blackberry in control in the winter, but in the spring, when other fodder is plentiful, they do not effect much control, and it is at this time that the farmer is called upon 1o check its growth.