Need Raspberry Advice

I’m putting in a little trellis and have purchased some blackberries to grow this year. (Prime Ark Freedom and Triple Crown). I have a little extra room and thought I’d add a raspberry or two to the mix. While I much prefer blackberries to raspberries the kids like them both and I thought I’d add some for variety. I don’t really know much about raspberries but I do know there are primocane and flourocane varieties just like blackberries. I don’t know if SWD is a problem in my area. I guess we will see. I do not want crumbly raspberries that fall apart when you touch them like many I find in stores.

Any suggestions that would work well with my two thornless blackberry varieties?

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If for kids, or adult kids get some yellows! Anne or Fall Gold. Josephine for a red.
The yellows are sweet, excellent flavor. Josephine is a huge berry that has the best flavor of any large red raspberry. For pure taste Caroline is one of the best. I like Polka too.
To add even more color get Double Gold, a nice pink colored raspberry (leave on till it darkens).
All of these are everbearing primocane fruiting. If SWD, you can harvest just the summer crop. These can be managed two ways, just harvest the primocane crop in the fall.and cut canes all down. Makes it very easy. Or just cut 1/3 of top off after fall fruiting and harvest a 2nd crop in the summer. Remove floricanes after summer
harvest. Some don’t make much of a summer crop, others do.
If SWD is a problem, you could just go with Summer bearing. Taylor, Cascade Gold, are great. Prelude is called Summer but produces a small fall crop and a huge summer crop. Berries have higher acid, great for cooking.

Lot’s of other good cultivars, just giving you my experience with what I have tried.
Space 4-6 canes per square foot. Thin out if 2 inches or closer to each other. Thin anytime before fruiting. Leave strongest canes. If only a few you can leave them close.
Good spacing gives good production and keeps patch healthy, good air flow etc.
Space 3 to 6 feet apart. They will fill it in by suckering.

Buy plants at Indiana Berry or Nourse. Both are top rate! Plants are amazing from these places.

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Here is a link you may find useful as a starting point:

http://www.fruit.cornell.edu/berry/production/pdfs/raspcultreview2012.pdf

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Thanks for the info. They did not have Josephine at Indiana Berry. I ordered Anne, Autumn Bliss, Double Gold, and Caroline. we’ll see how they do.

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Very good choices! . Raspberries are easier than blackberries.
The plants I got from both of these nurseries were huge and healthy as can be. My favorite nurseries for berries.
I just added Josephine last year, I can give you a sucker in the fall if you have room. Send me an Autumn Bliss in a couple years. Nice at Indiana you don’t have to order 5 of one kind, you can mix and match, and again they will give you awesome plants. I hate that 5 plant thing because one will turn into five in about 3 years. Raspberries are my favorite berry.

I have a hybrid growing of Anne x Polka. Hoping for an orange berry, Double Gold is kinda orange pink, and translucent, it is absolutely a beautiful berry. But it’s not deep orange, I need an orange! The hybrid grew 3 feet from seed, this is unheard of, I may have a real winner here! It’s going to fruit for the first time this summer! The cross took for sure. Anne is thornless, or almost, it was the ovary parent, and the hybrid has the exact some spines as Polka, soft, red, and about 14 inch long. It looks a lot like Polka, but came from an Anne berry.

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Anne is great and my favorite. It also seems to hold up better against SWD (maybe it is just that they are tasty when less ripe).

Caroline was one of the best tasting reds, but never produced much for me and was badly hit by SWD (I removed it).

I also removed Autumn Bliss- big berries, but they didn’t have much flavor and were hit by SWD.

I don’t have any experience with Double Gold, so I can’t rain on your parade with that one :slight_smile:

I’ll agree with Drew- I like Prelude. The large early crop is good. The smaller fall crop gets some SWD damage (more than Anne, less than Caroline).

I also grow Royalty, a bland/sweet purple berry. It finishes a week or two before SWD hits, so it is good for kids on both counts (they like sweet/bland and don’t like eating bugs). If it was just me, I’d get rid of it. As it is, I’m trying some other summer raspberries. I have high hopes for Lauren, based on the descriptions.

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Actually, Royalty has done the best of any of my raspberries so far, and I really like it.

That is a very good trait, I want to try a purple, I think I need to try myself.
I think with Caroline, it is one that makes a weak summer crop, I would just harvest the fall crop, supporting the summer canes is too much for it., It performs better for me cutting the canes down after the fall crop. For me being in a colder zone, the SWD starts on the fall crop, but halfway through is gone from the cold, and the last half is bug free. I bought two humming bird feeders to try to attract humming birds to eat them. Even if it doesn’t work having humming birds out while picking is a blissful experience, it’s a win win for me.

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I should have added that it is quite productive for me. So, if you like the flavor, it is a real winner.

You know that Murphy guy is to blame and his rules! (what can go wrong, will) No such thing as productive, disease resistant, and tastes good! Many have 2 of these traits, but all three is as rare as a wild jackalope or unicorn!

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Do you typically prune or pinch back raspberry primocanes at 36" to encourage lateral growth like many people do with blackberries?

I’ve watched several youtube videos where people leave the primocanes long and then tie them to the trellis in an arcing fashion. Almost every blackberry video I’ve watched suggests pruning primocanes at 36 inches to force lateral growth.

One other question I have about raspberries is that some are listed as everbearing. When I think of everbearing I think of a prolonged ripening of fruit. How long is the typical harvest for the varieties I purchased for both fall crops and summer crops? For example, if I grow Anne as a fall primocane crop will the fruit ripen all together in the matter of a week or two like a cherry tree would or can I expect to pick several berries each day over the course of 6 weeks or so?

Speedster:

I grow Jewell black raspberry and really enjoy them. I am very fond of
black raspberry jelly (not jam as too many seeds).

I let the primocanes grow up to 5’-5.5’ tall and then I tip prune them. By late summer, they have sent out so much lateral growth that they arch down to the ground like an inverted umbrella. Where they touch, they root. I normally will clip them before they hit the ground unless I want more to root to give away or plant for myself.

The following spring, I cut the floricanes back about 1/3 because once they fruit, the weight will pull them down to the ground! My plants have 4 large stakes around each and I use soft nylon rope to tie them up around the stakes to give them support.

Once I am done with the summer harvest, I cut out all the old floricanes to give the new primocanes more room.

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I like Killarney…so much that I planted 500 plants last year. Remains to be seen how well they do on our site but I can tell you that the berries are very flavorful, have a great flavor even before they are fully “ripe”, and are not crumbly like some other varieties.

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I was reading a lot of great stuff about the flavor of Tulameen but it sounds like it’s a summer floricane berry only.

Drew, I think most of the hummingbirds migrate by mid-September, so if the raspberries bear into the fall, they might not get relief from SWDs at that time. Occasionally there are straggler hummers, so maybe if they find the SWDs tasty, some might linger. I also plan to put some feeders at my rural land.

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SWD is gone here by mid-September. Or maybe I killed them all by then? Mine peak when they appear, and I go after them hard. I will spray daily DE powder. If any hatch, they are in powder. I remove fruit as soon as it’s infected.

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They usually ripen for me over an extended period. There is a peak, but expect to keep harvesting stragglers until the first very hard (mid 20’s?) frost. Sometimes I can still get a few to ripen into early December, but they are usually done by mid-November.

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My Anne are being dug out this spring cuz they attract SWD much more than polka and caroline from my experience. Gonna replace them with some new varieties of honeyberry.

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While I’m down here in OK doing chores for Mom, she wanted a raspberry plant, so we picked up a Heritage, a red everbearer.

Her zone is 7, I believe, with usually hot, dry summers. I already planted it, but was wondering if it would do well here. Any advice on care, such as watering. and fertilizing? Comments on the variety?

Thanks.

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