Well I just confirmed that a patch of thorny canes I’ve been watching are indeed raspberries. It’s growing next my my friends apartment, at the edge of the parking lot before the woods. The whole patch seems to consists of new primocanes, I only found a few fruit bearing shoots low to the ground. It’s a spot that gets plowed over or on top of during winter, so not surprised there wasn’t a nice batch of berries, I just found the one that wasn’t taken by critters. Well that one berry was very sweet, with hardly any sour notes. I’m thinking I’m going to dig up a section of canes and bring it home.
Also, I was at another friends place, just hanging out in ther back yard, and I noticed what looked like a fruiting cane sticking out over their neighbors fence. It was Indeed a blackberry cane, growing up through a very tall bush. I’m estimating 9-10ft tall, and the cane was thicker than my thumb! Then just on the outside of their fence, which back into an athletic field, I see a very robust looking looking single cane, I may have to go sample the berries when they ripen, then decide if I want to transplant one of those too… I’ll have to trim and train it of course, but it looks like it’ll have no problem supporting its own weight.
Well the cluster of small canes I dug up isn’t fairing too well. It was a very rocky area, basically had to pull one rock out at a time to get to the roots. I only managed to get about 7-8” of the root stock, so I pruned off all but 4 canes and then cut those down to a few sets of leaves as well. I also dug up a small individual sucker with a section of root, and that’s doing better. Then today I was checking out the main thicket again, and noticed flower buds had formed! So this is not only the sweetest red raspberries I’ve tasted yet, but it’s also a fall bearing type! I’m likely going to get a few more canes once it goes dormant. Or maybe get a section of root, does that need to happen when it’s dormant as well? The berries I’ve picked from the patch were small and soft, but oh so good.
We found some wild black berries(they had thorns) but they were not sweet at all. We picked some cause the kids still ate some with sugar on them. I did not get a cutting cause well they were not sweet and had thorns all over.
That berry looks suspiciously like a raspberry I’ve just bought and planted. I’ve not had any fruit from it but it’s called (in French) Black Raspberry which I have never seen or heard of before. Once it fruits I’ll post a picture.