How to Propagate Boysenberries

I recently received my first ever boysenberry plant in the mail, and it came in the form of a tissue culture.

It looked like an ordinary seedling you might buy from a nursery. But the owner of the store told me that it had been propagated in a lab.

When you purchase boysenberry plants to set out in your garden, you will usually have an option of a dormant bare root, or a small plant propagated in the nursery by one of four methods: a rooted cutting, tip layering, root division, or micropropagation in a lab setting.

We link to vendors to help you find relevant products. If you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission.

It got me curious about the best ways to propagate this uncommon plant that can sometimes be hard to find. Fortunately, you don’t need access to a lab, but you do need an existing plant.

And in none of the common propagation methods do you plant boysenberries, Rubus ursinus x. idaeus, from seed.

Why, you might ask?

Because boysenberries are a hybrid bramble – a cross between blackberries, raspberries, dewberries, and loganberries – and growing one from seed won’t produce a true boysenberry.

For this reason, they need to be propagated by a method that produces a clone of the parent plant.

Every single boysenberry plant in the world can be traced back to the original Knott’s Berry Farm berries.

For more on the history and cultivation of this hybrid bramble, check out our main guide to growing boysenberries.

Are you ready to discover the best ways to propagate these sweet, tart berries?

Let’s get started!

It can get a little, shall we say, brambly to try to understand how boysenberries produce fruit. I’ll break it down for you quickly and simply.

First, the