Raspberry patch

I am eager to grow some raspberries this season but have a few questions I am hoping experienced folks can answer. Although most of the raspberries were marked for zone 8 or less, I noticed that a couple of folks (@SanJoseFool, @joehewitt, etc) in this forum have successfully grown raspberries in zone 9B. After some research, I ordered a few varieties from IndianaBerry.com - Fall Gold, Double Gold, Heritage, Caroline, Royalty and Jewel. I located a small stretch in the backyard next to a wall to establish a patch where they should get partial shade and decent evening sun. I was going to follow a similar setup as here but with a raised bed

I have a couple of questions though. The guy in the above video was planting multiple varieties quite close to each other. Assuming most of the raspberries sucker to produce new canes, wouldn’t the different varieties “walk” into each other? If yes, wouldn’t that make it harder to identify each variety and difficult to prune and maintain them? Should I partition sections for each variety in my raised bed between to prevent this?

Second, how serious should I take the warning about not planting red and purple/black varieties close to each other? Stark Bros display a more prominent warning while IndianaBerry says I shouldn’t care too much about it. What is your experience? Let me know. Thanks!

1 Like

My experience is my black raspberries do not sucker at all but vigirously tip root everywhere the canes touch.

1 Like

I grew blueberries and red and black raspberries together. They grew together fine the one year they did. I didn’t see any diseases. I didn’t realize how much water collects on that spot. I don’t think any of my raspberries survived. Blue berries did. So I guess the lesson here is NOT that you can plant red and black together, it is that raspberries don’t like wet feet but blue berries don’t seem to mind.

1 Like

Yes, they will “walk into” or intermingle with each other, but you’ll find it easy to tell them apart from the berries and also you’ll find each variety has pretty distinctive leaves and stems. (i.e., Fall Gold primocanes are light green and very smooth while Heritage has very prominent red “thorns” all over the canes.) When it comes to pruning, there is no problem. After the primocanes have produced their fall crop you chop off the top third or quarter that produced berries, after the floricane produces the next year you cut the cane off at the ground and remove.
You will find that some varieties are more vigorous and will spread more than others, in that case you may find it helpful to be more aggressive in thinning the primocanes of these varieties so they don’t out compete the others. I have to do this with Fall Gold, it seems to sucker twice as profusely as other cultivars.
I just noticed you’re getting Purple Royalty as well. It will not produce a fall, or primocane crop, but rather a full crop on second year canes. It also has a totally different growth habit than all your other listed varieties so you’ll prune that one a little differently to keep it under control.
Hope this helps a little.

1 Like

Unless you go about 2 feet down no it won’t help. Even then they may still go deeper to get by it. It will slow them down.

The reason is reds can carry viruses that will kill the blacks. But fresh stock is virus free so any virus they pick up will be local and the blacks may too so no concern about it at all.
Jewel won’t produce on primocanes either, only floricanes.
If I was you I would look for Baba berry that one grows well in your area. Bay Laurel carries it. You do have too much sun even for Baba but Baba can take the heat, and you may find some of your others will not.

1 Like

Thanks Mike. As Drew mentioned below, I got Royalty (purple) and Jewel (black) floracane varieties to add more color to the patch. These need to be pruned and maintained differently than the other varieties which is why I was wondering if I need to keep them isolated instead of letting them mingle with each other. Looks like its hard to keep them separated while planting them close to each other. I’ll plant them together and see how they perform in a year or so

I did look at Baba berries which seem to be more heat tolerant. I guess reading from the internet I chose to believe what I wanted :smirk: DWN website says most of these will grow in my zone (9B) and some of them were mentioned in UCANR website as well for the region. However, every other source says they won’t do good here, so I am rolling the dice this year. If this fails horribly, I’ll seek out some Baba Reds and pull the rest off.

Jewel black raspberries are extremely thorny and should be kept at one end of a multi-variety row. This will make training and harvesting go more smoothly.

1 Like

good point. Didn’t research that!

Nothing wrong with experimenting. I do it all the time. Also nice to have a base of known performers too. Heritage will work there, so can Fall Gold. The others are questionable. Royalty may be fine too. I know other purple raspberries are very heat tolerant.

1 Like