Growing My First Blackberry Plant

Recently, my family went over to the store to do some grocery shopping and we grabbed ourselves a blackberry plant (Apache Thornless). We spent almost 7$ for the plant (kind of high, right?).

The blackberry plant was wrapped in a plastic bag and it seemed like it was sitting on the shelf for many weeks. When I grabbed a container and cut open the plastic wrap, the roots were looking quite cramped and the soil it was in was very dry. Doing my best to not disturb the roots too much, I began loosening up the cramped roots at the bottom to prepare it for the proper container. After watering it, I went ahead and snapped a photo. It's been about two days so far since I've planted it and it seems to be responding quite well to the container. The soil was just some compost and soil from my compost area. Typically, I don't buy any special fertilizer, or soil, when growing my food crops.

This will be the first time that I will be growing blackberry. Honestly, this is the first 'berry' I'm going to be growing ever. Strawberries have been a hassle for me to find at the local shops and using store bought strawberry seeds haven't worked out either. There is still a lot to learn when it comes to these berries. These kinds of berries take roughly 2 years to properly produce so we've got some time, however, it does seem like this plant is already flowering and preparing to form berries. Being quite ignorant still, I'll be analyzing and doing research on how these plants flower and how they reproduce properly.

Wish me luck on this one. We have only bought one of these plants so if this one dies, we have no backups and I doubt we'll be buying another anytime soon!