Thanks for the report. What exactly do goumi, serviceberry and honeyberries taste like?
How old are your strawb plants? What kind of flavor do those varieties have? We also planted Earliglow this year, with Jewel. We should get some fruit off them next year, our first fruit off of all our new plants/trees.
Which ones would you say were the best tasting? I haven’t heard that much about Autumn Britten or Jaclyn.
You ought to be running over with all kinds of berries next year!
I have seascape strawberry in a unheated high tunnel that are still putting out berrys , good for the middle of November . It’s day neutral.
Seems like they are getting bigger as it gets colder.
Not a lot at once , but I have ate them al most every day all…summer.
Yes, I like to have everbearing for some all year. I settled for Mara Des Bois, I like them a lot. As they are not just good but excellent. They can be tart, but dead ripe they are not tart at all. Produced till frost.
My gooseberries did well and I just made a syrup with them. I made some fruit leather, but mostly for smoothies. I mixed therm all up, and yes some like Poor man’s hang for as long as you want. Interesting to as Poorman turns yellow and Black Velevet leaves are a nice purple. So some ornamental features to those.
goumis taste a lot like a sweeter autumn olive. berries are bigger too. they stay on the bush a long time.taste is somewhat cherry like with a touch of tomato from the high lycopene content.
serviceberry is fairly bland to me but if you like a sweet berry they’re good. ill probably mix them with tarter berries in recipes. like a blueberry/ apple like taste. honey berry taste like a mix of blueberry/ tart cherry. my aurora and indigo gem are sweeter than the tundra with bigger berries. if i plant more ill get more auroras. my fav. raspberries are autumn britten , jaclyn and polka. with polka giving the biggest crop. i like a tarter berry so if you like sweeter, polka is the better one. they all start to produce mid aug . till frost in my area. my earliglow gave me 2 crops, one in mid june and late july. july crop was smaller. best tasting of the 2. the evies started to produce early july till. early nov. for a day neutral they put out more berries than the earliglow. flavor was very good also. this was their 1st summer. planted them mid fall of last yr. only pests i had was stinkbugs in the evies and horntail wasps in the polkas, which isn’t a big deal. i just pinch off the tip just below the girdle mark. causes laterals to grow which gives a bigger crop anyway. they don’t seem to bother my other 2 varieties. interested in trying some give me a yell next spring. ill dig you some or send some runners.
Thanks Steve for the detailed info. I don’t know if honeyberries would work here, maybe a bit too warm? I probably need to just concentrate on the berries I have.
We have a autumn olive in the back yard. It was cut down to the stump a couple years ago. Not only did it grow back, it’s now about 7ft tall! It had some berries on it this year, but I waited too long before the birds hit it.
I’m surprised your Evies put out more fruit than the Earliglow, I thought a June bearer generally outproduces an everbearer.
I’m not sure if I like a sweeter or tart rasp yet. So, I guess I need a mix of them, that’s why I’m planning on getting many different varieties. Thanks a lot for the runner offer. If I remember next year, I might hit you up for some.
Did you get any Marionberries? Are they as good as a lot of folks say they are? Would you call them the best blackberry you grow?
Are they thorny or thornless?
Yes to all questions. Thorny, low producers and growers. Low is relative, Chester would produce 500 berries, I have to grow in a container, not hardy here. I put it in the garage with my figs. Drinks water all winter, unlike most that need to be watered once a month.
New Berry is darn good too, but it tastes like a hybrid, not a true blackberry flavor. Also I consider western blackberries to taste different than eastern, Marion is a western, and the best.
Serviceberry are bland, tasteless, mildly sweet blueberries. Honeyberries are sour, larger blueberries, but they are very early, so I’m still trying with them. Birds seem to like them though, just like real blueberries.
I’m looking forward to trying Goumi- maybe next year.
Autumn Britten makes a large pretty berry, but I find it to be middle-of-the-road in flavor. Not bad, but it doesn’t stand out. I actually tried to remove mine due to SWD, but they keep coming back (the berries and the SWD…).
That’s a good idea- I’ve done this with blackberries, but never tried with raspberries.
So what makes a Marionberry so good in taste compared to other blacks? Is it hardy for you? Or do you have to bring it in as well?
I’ve heard you rave about tayberry as well, is that another BB hybrid? Do you grow boysenberry also?
i was surprised the evies produced more too. maybe because i planted in the fall they had more time to establish before fruiting. we’ll see next season. if you grow honey berries in a spot that has part shade in the afternoon, you could grow them. check out honeyberryUSAs website. they have japanese varieties that can handle more heat than the russian/ european cultivars. good luck!
In the garage, stays about 20F in there at it’s coldest.
Yes, but not a traditional blackberry, it’s a raspberry-blackberry hybrid and tastes more like a raspberry. The ones you picked are all very good blackberries, I would start with them. Yes, I have Boysenberry and agree it’s tart, it has such a good taste I use it for jam or syrup, much better than blackberry syrup, yet again here, this is a raspberry-blackberry hybrid, unique taste, nothing like Tayberry. Boysen is great for processing and tayberry is great for fresh eating and processing. It is not tart! Well under ripe it is, ripe it is not, and holds well ripe.Doesn’t get too soft, more raspberry texture which are firm.
Marion has the best blackberry taste although it does have raspberry in it too. I just like it. I find it tart when not ripe, balanced when ripe, takes a long time to ripen too.
Some of these are so complex, like New Berry and Columbia Star have over 35 cultivars in their lineage.
I have yet to find the perfect berries. All have advantages and disadvantages. Not always easy to determine what will work for you.
Marionberry is not hardy here, but it’s so good I put up with it and fuss over it.
bob, what do you consider the best flavored raspberry? the wild ones up here are the best but small berries. I’m always trying to find a better tasting raspberry. just added joan j and anne as well as ohio treasure everbearing black raspberries. should get some next year. thinking of adding caroline and bp-1 but not sure my seasons long enough for them to ripen. pulled my heritages do to this. frost killed them halfway thru fruiting. were fairly tasty tho.
Does anyone have a raspberry variety they would recommend for Southern summers? We get decent chilling hours here, and the temps never go down too low, but I need a berry that can stand up to 95 degree heat without turning to mush or dying.
Thanks, I’ll try the blacks I mentioned: PAF, Osage, Triple Crown, and maybe add in Ouachita or PA Traveler. I really don’t want to mess with thorny types, other than maybe Marionberry.
My wife said we have some Boysenberry jam in the cellar, so I need to try that out. I think her cousins wife gave it to us, along with some elderberry jam.
The only raspberry I’ve heard that might work in the South is called Dorman red, but don’t know of any other rasps that do.
I’m familiar with HB USA, this year I ordered three cherry bushes from them, plus a Jeanne gooseberry. The Juliet they sent me was a big 2ft tall plant with massive roots, it’s done well its first year in the ground. The Romeo and Crimson Passion were smaller and haven’t grown much, but still alive.
The Jeanne GB was a fine specimen, and has done well its first year, but I doubt we get any fruit next year.
Did the big Juliet plant you just got come from them?
Probably not. Mine took three years to fruit, almost all of them. Next year this time I could use a cutting of that one.
Thank you. I do know of the Dorman Red berry, but all that I’ve heard of it has been that it is of a poor quality. I have heard that Nantahala, Heritage, or Bababerry can be grown down here but have not seen anyone with first hand experience reporting that it worked for them.
yes it did . a nice 36in. tree with great roots. sure hope it makes it
I’ve heard about Nantalaha from Indiana Berry, they say it works in zones 6-10, so it might work for you: