The proper treatment is management rather than cultivation and stimulation.  It requires a sunny exposure and a light, warm soil, yet not so dry as to prevent the fruit from maturing into juicy berries.  If possible, set the blackberries off by themselves, for it is hard to prevent the strong roots from travelling all over the garden.  The blackberry likes a rich, moist, mellow soil, and, finding it, some varieties will give you canes sixteen feet high.  You do not want rank, thorny brambles, however, but berries.  Therefore the blackberry should be put where it can do no harm, and, by a little judicious repression, a great deal of good.  A gravelly or sandy knoll, with a chance to mow all round the patch, is the best place.  The blackberry needs a deep, loose soil rather than a rich one.  Then the roots will luxuriate to unknown depths, the wood ripen thoroughly, and the fruit be correspondingly abundant.

Let the rows be six feet apart; set out the plants in the fall, if possible, or early spring; put two plants in the hills, which may be four feet apart.  If the ground is very poor, give the young plants a shovelful of old compost, decayed leaves, etc.  Any fertilizer will answer, so that it is spread just over the roots to give the plants a good send-off.

As a rule, complete success in blackberry culture consists in a little judicious work performed in May, June, and July.  The plants, having been set out as I have advised in the case of raspberries, throw up the first season strong green shoots.  When these shoots are three feet high, pinch off the top, so as to stop upward growth.  The result of this is that branches start on every side, and the plant forms a low, stocky, self-supporting bush, which will be loaded with fruit the following season.

The second year the plants in the hill will send up stronger canes, and there will be plenty of sprouts or suckers in the intervening spaces.  When very young, these useless sprouts can be pulled out with the least possible trouble.  Left to mature, they make a thorny wilderness which will cause bleeding hands and faces when attacked, and add largely to the family mending.  That which a child could do as play when the suckers were just coming through the ground, is now a formidable task for any man.  In early summer you can with the utmost ease keep every useless blackberry sprout from growing.  More canes, also, will usually start from the hill than are needed.  Leave but three strong shoots, and this year pinch them back as soon as they are four feet high, thus producing three stocky, well-branched bushes, which in sheltered places will be self-supporting.  Should there be the slightest danger of their breaking down with their load of fruit, tie them to stakes by all means.  I do not believe in that kind of economy which tries to save a penny at the risk of a dollar.