Smallest Harvest, Proudest Pickers | Growing Blackberries in Mississippi

First Mississippi Blackberry Harvest

The harvest of our first blackberries should be known as the smallest one in Mississippi; although, it made two of the proudest pickers.

On a hot summer night before bedtime, my three year old son and I decided to water our container garden because of how hot the day was on our plants.

Now if you don't know what a container garden is, don't worry. It's basically planting whatever you want in a garden pot. We chose to do one because they are easy to keep up with and can be moved wherever desired.

After watering our tomatoes, banana peppers, cintronellas (a cool plant that repels mosquitoes), and a few other plants, it was time to check our blackberry vine.

One of the cool things about growing this particular blackberry vine is that it originally came from my parents' garden in Tennessee. Their blackberries were growing so well, they were kind enough to uproot a few to let us replant at our house.

We've been caring for our blackberry vines for about a year now and tonight, we would finally have their first harvest.

It's been a fun experience watching and helping them grow. We've used compost, coffee grounds, and vinegar to enrich the soil and their roots to help them.

Who would've thought that coffee, vinegar, old fruit, or egg shells could help a plant grow richer and stronger?

So tonight as we wrapped up watering our container garden, my son and I went to visit our blackberry vine before calling it a night. We knew tonight it would be ready to pick because we had been keeping an eye on them.

The last couple days they were red, and yesterday one had already started ripening and it's color was half red/black.

As I had my phone ready to take the picture, my little boy placed the one single ripened blackberry in his hand. It was an incredible moment because for so long it was about caring for it, and now it was time to enjoy the literal "fruits of our labor".

*Pluck*

The single and only ripened blackberry lay there in my son's hand.

*Gulp*

Did we have the smallest harvest? Most definitely, one single blackberry. But was it worth it? 100%.

What we've learned from our experience of growing blackberries is priceless, but best of all, it's delicious.