Emerald Carpet Raspberries any good? Zone 5?

General Fruit Growing
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Does anyone here grow emerald carpet raspberries? Are they sparse fruiters? Has anyone attempted them in zone 5?

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You will be pushing it in zone 5. Most nursery I see state they are zone 6 and up. I am not sure how they taste or grow though. I have only grown arctic and regular raspberries. I know most rubus species grows like weeds under most conditions though.

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Here in 8b they fruit nicely, have no raspberry flavor but are juicy and noticeably sweet.

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Thats what ive read online, but I feel like nurseries just copy and paste from other websites and with a plant with so little growers out there, who knows.

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Good to hear! They’re likely not gonna make it out here but I think ill give them a try.

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As stated above you could try the Arctic raspberries…Pollination seems to be the limiting factor so I plan to try my own seedlings once they get established and produce a few berries.

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I tasted some for the first time this fall, and while I agree they don’t really taste like a typical raspberry, they had a very fruity taste and were quite sweet. I was so impressed by their sweetness and flavor that I planted some myself.

I’m also in 8b here, though, so I can’t comment on their cold hardiness in much colder zones, either. The ones I saw in a neighbor’s yard were covered in fruit, though, so I wouldn’t call them sparse. They are small ground cover plants, though, so probably a lot less fruit per square foot compared to raspberry canes.

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Very interesting idea. Where did you source seeds from?

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For the Emerald Carpet, I have observed 2-3 dozen berries per square foot. Fruit is very similar to R. spectabilis (salmonberry) in color, a bit smaller in size, and much sweeter on average.

Growth habit for even mature dense carpets is well under 1 foot, zone 5 snow cover may protect.

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Thank you all for the great info!

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I am planning on getting seeds from the plants I bought from Hartmanns last year, assuming they produce this year! We’ll see how it goes. Some of our members in Europe who have access to more varieties seem to have much better fruit production. The four available here do not seem to cut it. It’s possible that similarly to honeyberries, they may need some special combination of genetics/bloom times to really produce well.

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