Hello, drew, I am interested in breeding a cold hardy black raspberry. How do I go about collecting the pollen. What next? I googled it and can’t find much. When do I pollinate the red raspberry flower? I am choosing the red raspberry as the seed plant simply because I have very few blackberry flowers and I am sure someone is going to want to eat it before I get the chance to pick it for seed LOL. Our raspberries are just putting out flowers now.
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You can collect pollen when flower is open. Best to get it off ASAP after opening. Cut the stamens into a jar and let the pollen dry. I use a picture painter’s brush, and use that to pollinate. To pollinate you need to cut the pedals off the flower before it is open.You also cut the stamens off when doing this. With a little practice use a brand new razor blade from a utility knife, I encircle the base of the pedals and cut deep enough to remove all male parts. The ovaries are in the middle. Easy to do with a little practice. Then use the brush to put pollen on the overies. After that I seal the flower with an organza bag. These bags are used at weddings and other events to hold various items. I got mine on EBay. They keep stray pollen out!
Here is a Loch Ness blackberry pollinated with Tayberry pollen. What is interesting is the drupes are much larger than the self pollinated berries around it. Appears to have worked!
Here is another example of Tayberry pollen on New Berry blackberry. Appears to have very incomplete pollination, only one or two drupes are forming. But these are likely good crosses. it also shows the organza bags work well keeping other pollen out!
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Does the fruit have to be perfect to collect seed? Or can a partially pollinated one be OK
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No, it does not have to be perfect! If one drupe is there, you got seed!
I also crossed with Columbia Star Blackberry, and it looks like no drupes there.
I’m getting old and can’t see if photo is in focus till I blow it up on the computer! Argh! I can’t seem to get a good photo of the New Berry cross, but that one drupe pollinated should be enough for seed. Now growing it out, is yet another set of challenges.
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I’m getting old and can’t see if photo is in focus till I blow it up on the computer! Argh!
Me too!
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Here is another picture of Irene raspberry, I decided on that name. It is orange at first, then turns a light pink.
You mentioned wanting to breed a hardy black raspberry. I have a wild from Ontario that appears to be very hardy. It is a yellow, and taste is just OK, but growing seeds out I got a black. It’s a young plant. Berries are the biggest black raspberries I ever saw.
I picked the ripe berries this morning, here is some unripe. The berry is almost as wide as my finger, big for a black raspberry.
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Are you taking the shot indoors or in the sun. Try both.
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The Irene raspberry is beautiful, what lovely colour. I assume then that you never know what you will get when growing out raspberry seeds.
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how does irene taste?
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No you do not! Even though it was a planned cross of Anne and Polka, and I was shooting for orange, you can’t predict. If I was a professional breeder, I would have grown out a test plot of hundreds to thousands of plants, and then pick the winners, slowly eliminating numbers in further evaluations.
Irene is really pink. It seems to hit orange on it’s way to pink.
Taste is excellent. It seems to taste somewhere between a yellow and red. Irene looks and tastes a lot like Double Gold. Color is not identical. Double Gold is a deeper colored pink. I will have comparisons this fall when the fall crop matures.
Hard to describe taste, it is pleasing with a good mix of tart and sweet. I would say lower acid than most reds, although some reds are low acid too, like Himbo Top.
My next cross with be Josephine with Fall Gold. Josephine is a very large red berry with excellent taste. Fall Gold is interesting in that it has wild Korean raspberry in it’s lineage. Hoping to keep that large berry size with an unusual color. Most raspberries take two years to fruit from seed. Irene did not, very unusual it grew so fast.
One draw to selling raspberries is to offer a rainbow of colors, and that is what i was shooting for.
Here are some of my raspberries from a couple years ago.
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Ok drew I think I have a few that have set some drupes, not a full fruit but some. What now? they are still bagged and green. Do I wait till they are fully ripe? And then do I have to plant the seed immediately or do I store the seed.
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Yes, OK, now once ripe, I use a strainer, but you can you a paper towel to remove pulp away from seed. these seeds tend to go bad, so best to prep it. You can freeze it too, if you want to wait. I have frozen seeds stored I got from a professional raspberry breeder. I was waiting till I got my technique down pat. As I can’t get anymore seed from the breeder now, he retired (why he gave it to me, his projects he never finished, yes quite awesome of him to do!)
So if you decide to store, dry it well, and freeze. Or you can prep for planting.
This is the really hard part.
The seeds have a protective coating to survive a digestive track. The coating must be removed as it takes about 2 years to wear off! Bleach for 30 minutes or battery acid for 15 minutes. Strain in a small hole strainer or paper towel in a large holed strainer.
Rinse well and plant. Bramble seeds need little or no soil on top of them. Sand works great. I use seed trays, and just use a seed starter mix. I want to try sand too. You can use a pot too. Put a few in there, you can separate plants later. They now need to be chilled all winter. I put mine in the garage which is unheated. A shed, the fridge works too. Professional breeders have dedicated refrigerators. It should have a cover to keep seeds humid, and must be kept moist. With a cover you may not need to water all winter. This part is called stratification. The bleach part, scarification.
You could also just plant it outside somewhere after scarification. It needs a winter’s chill. I have plants come up all the time all over my yard from birds eating them (scarification occurs from the sulfuric acid in their stomach), I just saw a plant in my blueberry pot today! I usually don’t keep them, but you certainly could! It was from a seed in bird poop, from last year. The bird pooped the raspberry seed out as it was eating my blueberries! Yeah off subject but I came home from up north today to discover the birds ate about 100 green not ripe blueberries! Damn, I need to net them right after they form! I spent today netting them all, I have 10 blueberry plants.
Next spring put them in shade, and hope they germinate.
If you were to do nothing and just plant the seeds, chances are they will germinate, but most of the time it takes two years, so in the spring of 2019 they may germinate.
I’m going to try and just do the scarification and plant in a pot, much like the volunteers that come up every year in my pots! I have fabric bags you can leave out all winter. The blueberry pot was a normal pot, but was under overhead protection (no rain or snow) all winter. I’m experimenting with how to over winter blueberries in pots.
OK, I did that rather fast any questions, post.
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you explained it well, thanks
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The first year I tried I got zero germination. I didn’t leave them in the bleach long enough. For Irene I used battery acid for 15 minutes. I still need to refine, as I may get better germination at 20 minutes? I like using the acid, but bleach should work at 30 minutes. It did for Tyler a friend of mine from Ontario. He was germinating black raspberries too. So that is where I got the time for bleach.
At Meijer grocery store I bought a Kitchen aid brand strainer/sieve that is fine enough to catch raspberry seeds. I also use it to remove seeds from the jams I make. I use a pestle to mash the juice and as much pulp as possible threw it, some remains in strainer.
When collecting seed I use paper towel not to damage seed, but the strainer is useful for removing seed from bleach/acid and rinsing well.
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An update on my berry run.
I removed the dead triple crown but aside from that all of the other berries are thriving. I’ve gotten fruit from every single plant so far except for PAF. I know the consensus is to remove all fruit the first year but I’ve taken a gamble and let them produce a handful of berries.
There is one berry plant that I do not like though and that is Brandywine. It’s not an upright grower and its considered a trailing type. That plant is growing like gang busters but is all over the place. It’s sprawling outside of the run and into the other berries. Even if I tie it to the trellis it’s a mess. I think I am going to remove it and replace it with another upright variety.
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Good to hear yours are doing well. Which one would you say tastes better, more productive? Any pics?
Of the five rasps I planted in early June, only the Eden has sprouted, along with the Anne that was planted in May. But, they’ve never got more than a foot tall. Seems like they sprouted and just stopped. Maybe they’ll take off next year.
The other four have not shown any signs of life. There are some sprouts that kinda look like raspberry sprigs, but I suspect they’re a weed.
I suppose I waited too long to get them in the ground after I received them. Some had a few white sprouts on them while still in the shipping bag. So, I’m just about to say these are a bust. It’s been almost two months and nothing. We’ll give them another shot next year, in a proper plot. Since they’re only $3-4, not a big loss, but we’ll lose a year.
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Subdood,
My raspberries took a couple years to get going well. The first couple years they were scrawny yellowish bushes only a foot or two tall. I think they also suffered farm herbicide drift. The ones I planted in 2014 now have healthy robust dark green canes for the first time, so should produce well next year if the herbicides don’t get them. The arborist mulch is also breaking down and probably enriching the poor soil in that area, plus I have a 5’ chicken wire fence around each variety to keep out the deer and some of the rabbits. I also have been fertilizing them more heavily than at first. So don’t give up hope. And those sprigs may well be raspberries.
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I will try to snap a few pics tonight if I can get around to it. These plants are so young I’m unsure if the tastes are true to type but I think my favorite is double gold so far. They are smaller than Anne but have been a bit sweeter. I do like Anne though and Caroline has been small too but the flavor is quite good. The plant I bought as heritage I believe is Fall Gold. They have good flavor but have been very crumbly which I don’t like.
The PAF got a very late start and is still small. It has some funky leaf curl thing going on with part of the plant. Not sure what that is all about. It has one berry that is starting to develop.
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Thanks, at least we’ll have two plants. I may do a little careful digging into the soil to see if there’s any growth from the roots of the unresponsive plants.
Of my four gooseberry plants, two are doing really well. Both are over a foot tall with two or three canes at least. Those are the Oregon Champion and Jeanne. The Poorman isn’t as large but has grown a decent amount. But, the Hinnomaki Red is just about toast. It just has a couple of small spikey canes, and virtually no leaves on it. It had the smallest roots of all the GB’s and was very small to begin with, so I’m not too surprised.
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I need some advice on planting some brambles. We’re expecting 10 raspberry and 5 blackberry plants in April. I’m trying to figure out the best site for them. How much sun do they need?
The spot I have tentatively picked out would get some partial shade in the morning, but after about noon, they would get full sun until 5pm or so. The shade is from a Paulownia tree, and won’t completely shade the patch. Our summers aren’t too hot, so I don’t think I have to worry about sunburned fruit.
I’ve read that some of the primocane blackberries we’re getting may not have a good primocane crop if it’s too hot, so maybe they’d benefit from a bit of shade?