Blackberry Jam Fruit
Bunchosia argentea
Slow-growing and naturally compact — it asks for warmth and patience rather than space.
- Type
- Fruit · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Red
- Sunlight
- Bright light under glass, right through the year.
- Watering
- Regular water in the growing season; a mature plant handles dry spells.
- Feeding
- Feed every 4-6 weeks, and no more — overfeeding does it no favors.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- August
- Pruning
- Very little needed — it stays compact and grows slowly on its own.
- Overwintering
- Keep it above 10°C, with air moving even in the depths of winter.
- Sep–Oct Flowering
- Oct–Dec Fruit Set
- Dec–Dec Harvest
- Jan–Sep Harvest
- Plant spacing
- 19 ft 8 in
- In-row spacing
- 19 ft 8 in
- Between rows
- 23 ft
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody and fibrous
- Working depth
- 12–24 in
- Can reach
- 3 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 20–26 ft across, about 1.5–2× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 20 in of soil
A shallow woody framework with the fine feeding roots in the leaf litter above it. Those feeders are mostly under the outer half of the canopy rather than against the stem, which is where water and feed should go.
The habit is Blackberry Jam Fruit’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Hoverfly Syrphidae
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) Coccinellidae
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
- Green lacewing Chrysoperla carneaHunts Mealybugs
Its bristly larvae — "aphid lions" — impale aphids, mealybugs, thrips, and mite colonies, eating hundreds a week. Adults feed on nectar and pollen from small open flowers and overwinter in hollow stems left standing.
Green-leaved fruit, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com