Strawberry/Blackberry/Raspberry recommendations?

Can anyone recommend varieties of strawberry and/or blackberry and/or raspberry suitable for zone 6a?

I also have a few more specific questions...obviously I'm very new to all of this... :)

* Would you recommend day neutral or (otherwise) strawberries?
* Is there a variety of strawberry that would grow best in a strawberry pot?
* Would you recommend thornless or thorned blackberries/raspberries? (I'm looking for good taste, I'm not particularly opposed to thorns. Yet. I think.)
* How would you recommend I amend the soil for berries? (Current soil is mostly clay, not sure about pH).
* Is spring the best time to plant all three types of berry? Will they fruit this fall or next year?
* Should I stake/trellis blackberry/raspberry vines?

Thanks!!!
pam

you should check out www.noursefarms.com

I called them for help and they were really knowledgable and helpful. And their rating on Garden Watchdog is fantastic.

Pam, I very much like my 'Tristar' Day Neutral Strawberries. They are small to medium size but soooo flavorful. They produce all Summer too, with a 2 week break after the June flush. I've tried other Day Neutral and nothing compares to Tristar.
I have June bearers also for the freezer. Great big fruit, 2 gallons a day for 3 weeks. How much can I use????
The Blackberries require a bit of research. I grow 2 kinds. The thorny Illini and the thorn-less Chester. The thorny is sweeter but still not as good as the wild. The Chester produces more fruit.
I'd trade them both for a well behaved wild flavored variety.
Andy P

Thanks for the info...Zeppy the nourse farms site is great, just what I need. :)

pam

Thanks Zeppy I just placed an order at Nourse too!

I've grown Tribute & TriStar day-neutrals. Made more than we could eat, and the harvest was spread over an extended period through most of the spring, early summer and fall. Tried some junebearers later, but couldn't get the kids to keep them weeded. Earliglow and Sparkle get rave reviews for flavor from my friends who grow junebearers.

Kiowa thorny blackberry makes a HUGE berry - doesn't take long to pick a gallon of berries - and doesn't take many plants to produce gallons of them. They're thorny as the dickens, though, and benefit from some trellising, but if you 'top' the primocanes at about 4 ft, they'll branch out and stand fairly well on their own.
My buddy Don, in VA, raves about Triple Crown, but it most definitely requires a trellis - more work than I'm willing to put out, at least at the moment..

Simmons Berry Farm has great plants and reasonable prices.
http://www.alcasoft.com/simmons/

Lucky, that's funny, I had just ordered TriStar and Tribute, also Sparkle which is always recommended for flavorful preserves. Glad to hear the recommendation!

We let the U-pick-em farms grow the strawberries since we don't have the space. I have been very under-whelmed by the flavor of some of those berries - they are big and ripe but don't have much flavor. One place had a few rows of a very small berry that was fantastic and made terrific freezer jam. But the only reason I knew about it was because I commented the big berries seemed tasteless - then the guy directed me over to the other rows.

On raspberries - I have goofed those up 3 years in a row so this year I am determined to try to get some berries. I fortunately discovered a tag in the ground from the former owner and I've got Red Latham. Yesterday I went and cleaned the bed thoroughly and pulled all the english ivy away and weeds and thinned out the canes and cut them back again to about 3-4 ft. I think I'm a little late for cutting back but I had done it in Feb to about 5 ft. I mulched each cane with Sweet Peet - an organic mix and am going to mulch with more of my own compost and some hardwood mulch to keep down the weeds and running mints that had been planted there. Other than that I don't know what else to do for them so hopefully I'm on the right track.

Can someone comment on how short you can keep the canes and still get good production? Since Red Latham is a mid-season berry that doesn't repeat I was going to plant dwarf sunflowers in the bed also for the kids. Then we can virtually guarantee the raccoons will wreck everything - lol.

I have thornless blackberries. Each spring, I buy fruit tree spikes in bulk at a local nursery and place 3 (in a 10-2-4 arrangement) in the soil about 10 inches away from each cane. They are in reach of a water hose so they never lacked for moisture. Last year, my berries were as large as half of my thumb and the amount was amazing.

Louise

I tried Kiowa blackbery plants two years ago but I must be a super wimp. Those things are SO THORNEY. I mean vicious thorns. I dug the darn things out before I ever got as far as getting any fruit. I will just stick with my upright thornless blackberries. They have nice large size fruit but not as big as Kiowa. No pain and no trellis required. I have Apache, Arapaho and my new ones are Ouachita. All three are Releases from the University of Arkansas.

I am no expert on summer red raspberies but I don't think you are supposed to cut the ends of the canes off. They don't realy need tipping like blackberries and black raspberries do.

I grow Heritage red raspberry, an unknown June bearing strawberry, Ozark Beauty day neutral strawberries, and thornfree and black satin blackberries.

The Heritage raspberris can be double cropped. The first year they have a fall crop. On half of the bed I cut the canes back to the ground late last winter. The other half I cut back to about 12-18". The canes that were cut back to the ground will have a fall crop of berries beginning about mid August here in z6a that will go till the first hard frost/freeze. They can take a light frost and still put out berries. The canes that were cut to 12-18" are going to bloom in the next couple of weeks. They have tight buds on them already. This is the first year I am doing it this way but if it goes as planned I should have some raspberries from about July through frost.

Last year was the first year I grew the DN strawberries. They did ok, if I could keep the birds and rabbits out of them. Nothing spectacular but we had enough berries for a snack. The June bearers (variety unk) have not had damage from a late frost in the 3-4 years I've grown them.

The black satin blackberries started blooming within the last day or two. They did really great last year. I planted 6 plants in 04 that I cut back to the ground at planting. They sent up 1st year canes that summer and last year I ended up harvesting 37lbs of berries not counting the handfulls I ate while picking. This will be the first bearing year for the thornfree variety so I can't comment on them other than to say I did get a little bit of winter kill on them that I didn't get on the black satin.

In 04 I also planted 6 raspberry plants. That fall I had enough berries for a taste every now and then. In 05 I quit picking at 42 lbs of fruit. I know at least another 5-10lbs was lost as I didn't have time to pick and nobody seemed interested in coming over and getting them.

Kerry_in_KY & all, thanks for the info on the raspberry plants. Some small canes are just breaking the soil on my 3 Heritage raspberries this week. If they survive my black thumb this year, I won't worry about if I get any fruit or not - and if I can get 5 lbs of fruit next year, I'd probably be over run with joy :-) I was also thinking of double cropping them - and when we are full of them and I put a few in the freezer, I was thinking I'd un-net them and let the birds have at them. Does anyone net their raspberries? And how difficult is it to un-net them when you are ready to cut them back? I am barely 5 ft tall, and I am guessing that I will be netting, un-netting, pruning, etc. essentially by myself. Also, how do you cut yours back? With 3 initial plants and not wanting to let the bed get too big, is it practical to do it by hand with hand pruners or maybe hand tree pruners?

I've had to net my blackberries but the birds didn't show any interest in my raspberries last year. Perhaps since it was the fall crop there was much more around for them to eat or perhaps they couldn't get a hold of the thorny branches? In either case I don't think I lost one to the birds that I could tell.

I usually just use hand pruners to cut them back though I may try a weedeater this week to get the ones coming up between the two beds. That or a hoe.

This message was edited May 14, 2006 6:51 PM

I can tell you that the birds love the Blackberries, thorns or not.
Having a Mulberry tree nearby, helps.
Andy P

I have a lone blackberry that I bought on the half-dead shelf at a big box store. I planted it where my first compost pile had been at this house and surrounded it with wood chips from the tree I took down. I fed it with Gardens Alive Fruit Tree fertilizer and gave it plenty of water from the hose. It doesn't get much morning sun but does get sun all afternoon. I got gallons of 1" or bigger berries last season. I took them to work, I gave them to the neighbors, I froze a gallon zip lock bag full and then I started having nightmares about eating them because there were sooooo many. I think that the plant is an Arapaho - it is virtually thornless and doesn't need a trellis. It is at least 6' high and 8' long. I have it planted between my garage and a chain link fence and it is partically invasive! I have been pulling up the "babies" and I would love to send anyone who wants one, a blackberry start.

Your Blackberry is not Arapaho. Arapaho is totaly thornless and not a training variety but an erect variety. The thornless erect varieties from University of Arkansas are great blackberries. They don't travel like the trailing ones do and are very well behaved staying put were intended. No thorns to get jabbed by either when picking the large yummy fruit. Mine are going to start flowering very soon now.

I have had great success with my thornless blackberries here in N.W. Missouri. I have Arapaho and Navaho blackberries and have Choctaw(thorny) Blackberries. Choctaw have a smaller seed than Kiowa( one of their characteristics). We make the best jam and jelly I've ever eaten from our blackberries. Heaven on earth is eating homemade jams and jellies on biscuits or as I prefer on waffles or pancakes!! I need to replant red raspberries since my old area eventually quit producing as well. Heritage Red Raspberries are excellent and easily picked on the first cooler,dryer winds and temps of early fall or late summer. Surecrop Strawberries are good but so are so many others out there you could try.