Time to pick blackberries

Your blackberries are well ahead of ours over here! What are Chiggars, please?

Oh chiggars are biting little bugs that itch for days, far worse than mosquitos and you can't see them. If you don't use bug spray before you go out and about in the woods they bite your feet and anywhere else you don't
spray yourself. I learned that the hard way. I was working in an area clearing brush and boy did I suffer.
the itching is awful.

by the way our blackberries are late this year, we usually start picking the first of July.

your Chiggars sound like our midges, they get everywhere.
have anyone else found that Avon skin so soft keeps them away or is it just me lol.

you get billed for having blackberries? or did i read that wrong lol

We have Lone Star Ticks mostly. I just keep picking them off the dog and put them in my "tick jar"! I put insecticide in a jar as they are hard to kill. I put Frontline
on Shorty to kill fleas ticks and chiggars. They still get on him so we have to watch we don't get them on us. They all itch like crazy.
I can see how the blackberries can take over. I try to keep them trimmed back. otherwise its hard to get in to
pick them. I get scratched up pretty good. They grab my shirt so it doesn't matter if it has long sleeves or not.

There are a lot of different ticks in the US, some very small about this size ( . ) and some quite large, they spread a number of diseases. Lyme disease and Rocky Mtn Spotted fever to name a couple. Chiggers are mainly a southern and midwest pest which burrow under the skin. Black fly is a pest in the far northern US (as I'm sure our Canada members will attest to) and Yellow fly are the scourge of the deep south and Florida. Now after all that none of you will want to visit the US. We probably use more repellent then anywhere else. lol

Towards the end of last winter I cleared brambles from two thirds of Shenstone's back garden, they were particularly prolific in the bottom half but were also erupting in the lawn and progressing along the hedge. Boy, were they vicious! It was impossible to dig them out, that would have required digging the entire garden, so I have mown them into submission on the lawn and sprayed every sign sprouting in the flower beds and hedges. So far I feel I am winning.
But those left untouched at the far end of the garden are promising an excellent crop of berries this autumn :-)