Black raspberry

We’ve been harvesting blacks for about a week also. These are from two Jewel and one Niwot black raspberry plants I planted in a small raised bed made just for these. We have picked around 8 or so cups of berries, with more to come in the next few days.

I had read that the crop load in the first fruiting year is not that large compared to subsequent years. If this is true, we’ll have a boatload of them next year!

In just a couple hours, I’m going to cook down a couple cups of them with sugar and then serve warm over vanilla ice cream, with whipped cream on top.

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Yum, please put your picture of the dessert in the using fruit as food category.

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I’m so sorry! We just ate it!

My phone battery was dead, and I didn’t have a camera handy. Suffice it to say that it was delicious!

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With my local wild black caps, it seems like they have absolutely awesome flavor for about the first week and a half of harvest, and after that berry quality and flavor just drops off a cliff.

I’m curious other have the same experience, and if the named varieties are any better. I really would like to extend the season if I could.

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Would you happen to know the potash content of the soil their roots are in?

No, I don’t. I’ve been meaning to get a soil test done though. Is that something to look for?

There are many possibilities for the drop off in flavor. One of them is exhaustion of potash supplied in the previous summer-fall from leaf mulch and any fertilizer you might add.

My Jewel black raspberry has never had a great taste. Different fertilizer maybe?

Not sure.

Try another cultivar.

Are yours wild or a named cultivar?

no wilds blacks grow around here. ohio treasure. its primocane fruiting so you can get 2 crops. z3-8. got mine from Hartmanns.

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I haven’t been able to get a domesticated cultivar to survive here. Bristol, Allen and Munger all got zapped by winters. I’ll have to try Ohio Treasure, thanks. I do have one patch of wild black raspberries and plan to root some branch tips yet this year. I’d like to get another patch started in a more convenient harvesting location.

Hi @clarkinks. Just stumbled across this thread. I had no idea that black raspberries were more drought and cold tolerant than the red. We have wild red raspberries that show up in the creek beds and other wet spots. And I have a successful patch of Prelude reds which grow fine here (with irrigation). But the idea of growing some black raspberries that would not need the water or protection of the reds is interesting.

Are there any named varieties of the blacks that folks like and are cold/dry tolerant?

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Many people speak good of black hawk but I’m not sure what variety mine are.

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Here’s a pic. Maybe this year they will be better. I tried one other cultivar, can you recommend one?

rr

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I will get back to you in that. Out of town right now.

Its ok, I’ll find one!

Mrsg47
Jewel does not have a great flavor , but it is a larger berry.
Bristol has the best flavor of the blacks to me.

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I don’t know if it’s been said, but blacks aren’t terribly heat tolerant. Here in Richmond we get about 2 weeks in early July before the summer heat shuts them down according to the people I get my berries from, and they only grow them because the owner is extremely fond of them.

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