Companion planting. Blackberries and Basil?

[dirtyhands]

Hi y'all, I'm new here. I think I'm expected to introduce myself in the introduction section of this forum, so I'll do that soon enough. Meanwhile, I have a question which is what brought me to this forum...

Blackberries. I recently purchased 4 baby plants, the erect variety. I plan to surround them with companion plants, mostly herbs such as chives, bee balm, borage. One herb I would really like to plant in the same garden bed as the blackberries is basil. However I can't seem to find a solid yay or nay on whether or not this is considered good practice. Every googling effort ("can I grow basil next to blackberries?") produces results that neither tell me that I can or that I should not. It's as if no one has ever attempted to grow the two near one another before. I suppose I can just try it and see what happens. But if I wind up losing my blackberries in this experiment, I'll shrivel up and go die in a compost pile. Basil can always be replanted easily enough, but the berries are really my main priority.

I hope I posted this question in the correct area of the forum. It's not really a fruit question (blackberries) but it's not exactly an herb question either (basil), so I was a bit lost. If I goofed, please feel free to move my post into a more appropriate section. Thank you!

 

[YumYum]

Blackberries will likely spread out and smother the planting location of the herbs unless you can keep the blackberries cut back or separated. They grow by tip rooting or suckers from roots. I've heard of strawberries under blackberries but have never done it.

 

[dirtyhands]

Thank you. Yes, I do plan to keep the blackerries cut back. My hope is the erect variety I selected will be easier to manage than the trailing kind.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Hi, welcome to the forum, I like the name, realistic.
When I find myself in this sort of situation I always try and spread the risk. Four blackberry plants, I would separate them a bit and put different things around each. The trouble then is if it goes wrong you can never be sure that was the only factor, but it gives you a good clue.
On the other hand I have grown a lot of basil around a lot of things and it has never seemed to inhibit them, and they are different enough plants that I can't imagine there being a disease problem.

 

[dirtyhands]

lol, the name. I was out in the garden sans gloves, and came in to search the question. When I set up my account here and was prompted for a user name, I noticed I still had potting mix underneath my fingernails...

That's a really terrific idea and I think I'm going to do exactly that. The garden bed I'm putting them in is raised, and very loooong. So I can put the basil next to a blackberry baby that is on one far end. That way the others won't come into close contact with it. I should have my answer by the time the basil is finished for the year and then I'll know better what to do next season. Then maybe I should write a blog about it bcuz I can't possibly be the only person in the world who's ever grown both blackberries and basil

 

[Meadowlark]

I ran across this old thread on companion plants with blackberries. My blackberries never get fertilized...I never use synthetics fertilizers in my garden. My blackberries only need a little nitrogen each year and I find that is very easily accommodated with a companion Vetch a legume which fixes nitrogen in the soil and comes back every year on its own.

Currently, there are many red berries ripening and soon the vetch will die back on its own revealing another crop of delicious blackberries.

Vetch is my choice for companion plant for blackberries.

 

[DiggersJo]

I spend a lot of time trying to control wild blackberry here and they are not a fruit I like. The vetch (heard of, but don't know it) looks very much like another weed trying to take over our front garden in recent years! Saying that, I'm fascinated by the principle of using the legume growing up the blackberry.

 

[Meadowlark]

... The vetch (heard of, but don't know it) looks very much like another weed trying to take over our front garden in recent years!

I'd guess that other weed might be bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis)...a nasty one that chokes plants out.

 

[DiggersJo]

No, I know bindweed well from other days gone by, awful weed I agree. Ours I'm sure is your Vetch (never knew the name until now, thank you). It might now be allowed in some parts as the flower is nice enough and the bees like it. Add that to the nitrogen I'm sure it can stay in some parts of the garden.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

The vetches are pretty common, not always climbing like that, there is a lower one that is red and yellow we used to know as 'Eggs and bacon' when I was young. I had a friend who ran a scrap yard in Kennington, there was an eight foot wire fence along the front and bindweed grew up that, he loved it, and it looked a lot better than scrap cars behind a wire fence. This is a slightly fictionalised account,

.Bindweed also features in another of my videos called 'Playing out', the catching bees trick came from kids on Brixton hill and the phone box that used to be on Jebb ave by the prison.

 

[Helen Wasserstein]

It's always a bit of trial and error with companion planting, but you might want to consider planting basil in a separate pot nearby initially to monitor how the two interact.