We carry a lot of tools in our landscaping trucks, but we use the same few tools on most blackberry removal jobs: hedge trimmers, brush cutters, grub hoes, pickaxes, shovels, rakes, buckets, and, of course, a dump truck.
You can get the tools. The harder part is knowing how to use them together, getting into the area, and having a crew that can keep working until the cutting, digging, and hauling are done.
The process sounds simple. Cut the canes into manageable pieces. Haul them out. Use grub hoes and pickaxes to work through the roots and dig out the crowns. Rake the area and haul the rest away. But doing that for eight hours, especially on a large thicket, is difficult work. You have to do these jobs over and over to get efficient at them.
This project was one of our bigger ones. I’d call it Blackberry Mountain Part Two. The homeowner had rented out the house for a little over a decade. During that time, blackberry grew into the side hedge, tangled with the laurels and rhododendrons, and kept getting thicker. Some of the canes appeared to reach more than 15 feet. We stood there looking at them in disbelief. It was some of the biggest blackberry we’ve ever seen—almost beautiful, in the strange way an enormous yard cleanup can be.
Then we had to remove it.
A thicket like that takes more than a brush cutter. You need a crew that can see how to get into it, cut the canes without burying the next person in debris, move that debris out, and find the crowns once the ground is visible. Cutting back the top growth opens the area. Digging out the crowns is what addresses the established plants below it. King County identifies cutting followed by root-crown removal as an effective way to control Himalayan blackberry.
And you need somewhere to put it all. Blackberry canes take up a lot of truck space. The cutting, dragging, loading, and hauling are a major part of the job. Access matters too: a thicket beside a driveway is one thing; one tangled through a hedge at the far side of a property is another. That’s why the tool list alone doesn’t tell you how hard the project will be.
Can you try it yourself? Yes. Get the tools, put on protection against the thorns, and start with one section. See how much you can cut, dig, and haul in a day. A smaller patch may be manageable. On a job like Blackberry Mountain Part Two, most people don’t have the time, crew, or hauling capacity to work through the whole thing.
Removing the bulk of a thicket also doesn’t mean the ground stays clean forever. We remove the visible blackberry and root crowns included in the job, then the homeowner needs to watch the area. A missed crown can send up a new shoot, and seeds in the soil can germinate after the ground has been opened up. Follow-up is part of keeping blackberry under control.
I tell customers to pay close attention during the first few months. If you see a handful of new sprouts, deal with them while they’re small. Check again after that, especially during the growing season. Spending 20 minutes on a few sprouts is a very different job from waiting until they become another thicket.
It’s like cleaning your bathroom. You can give it a thorough cleaning today, but you wouldn’t expect it to stay clean forever. A yard works the same way. If blackberry doesn’t grow in the cleared soil, some other weed may. You can add bark or replant the area as part of a maintenance plan, but you still have to pay attention to what comes up.
That’s what we do for customers: take on the big mass of growth that built up over years, dig through what we can see, haul it away, and give them an area they can manage again. The tools make the work possible. The crew, access, hauling, and follow-up determine the result.
Field note: Cut the canes so you can reach the crowns. Clear the crowns so you can see the ground. Then keep checking the area. A one-time cleanup gives you a reset; regular attention keeps it from becoming Blackberry Mountain again.