tastiest berry poll

I am looking to plant a bunch of berries this spring and would love to hear which berry in each category is best. If yuou have first hand experience planting berries- please nominate your favorite (going solely on best tasting):

Strawberry
rasberry (feel free to nominate any of the colors)
blueberry
gooseberry
blackberry (feel free to nominate thorny types)

blackberry - hands down...

Strawberry.....Still looking for the perfect berry. I have tried many June bearers and some "everbearers"

Raspberry....I like the Bristol black, two reds of which one is Caroline, and Fall Gold.

Blackberry.....Triple Crown is hard to beat.

Gooseberries...a little tart for my taste

Blueberry........Blueray and Chandler

mitch am looking for fave species of berry within each type- ie fave strawberry and fave blackberry etc

yep - blackberry, all of them.. any of them and every last one of them.

Tops in my book.....Yellow Wonder Alpine Strawberry

Close second...Illinios Everbearing Mulberry

Top blueberry? I don't know...the birds and my sons get them before I know they're ripe
Top raspberry....Heritage for me as its the only one that produced well for me (I also tried Latham, but Heritage out produces and tastes better here) Fall Gold is great, but its the only yellow I have.

Top blackberry? Triple Crown is great, I have a Boysenberry, but it hasn't really begun producing well yet (this will be its third year) I have a wild one my mother in law gave me that out produces triple crown, but the berries are tart (and huge). The wild one grows very upright and I topped the plant at 6+ feet last autumn (the stem is over an inch thick) IT also tends to keep its leaves throughout the winter.

Top Gooseberry? Pixwell ain't it. My oldest son likes them or it would have been SP long ago.

chills r u from england?

I absolutely love black raspberries but have had tremendous success as a gardener with a variety of blackberries. I can't imagine life without eating blackberry crisp, blackberry jam and jelly, blackberry pie, blackberry buckle, blackberry dumplings, etc. What work you put into them you will easily get back.
I have grown red raspberries with great success in the past too. Any kind of berries
from the garden are pretty hard to beat.

Cuckoo

ok.. I love wild blackberries for flavor.. Maybe for the whole experience of getting out in the woods with no-one else around and watching wildlife.. I get scratched up some.. But , nothing beats the flavor.

raspberries.. I experienced for the first time this year.. wild raspberries on a mountaintop in Bulgaria.. in September.. small sweet.. amazing taste.. don't think I will ever top the experience.

This year here in Mid Missouri I had the best black wild raspberry crop I have ever had.. and as wonderful as they were they still didn't top that red raspberry in the mountains.

Haven't found the ultimate strawberry.. Still looking.

I pick gooseberries and have some in the freezer.. I pick cause they are there.. and the flavor is a little different..

cuckoo4blackberries.. , I am looking forward to seeing what success I have with the blackberries I got from the Spring Missouri Roundup.

blueberries, I have tried and failed .. will try again..

gg1223456

I'm not from England, but my family is only second generation from England, Newcastle upon Tyne and I have been back twice.

Why?

~Chills

Strawberry: Mara des Bois first, Suwannee second. Mara des Bois is smaller but firm and with a whole lot of flavor. Suwannee are very perfumed in taste, the most of any berry I have had. They are too mushy though.
Raspberry: Jewel black (never tried Bristol), Josephine red (this is an aromatic berry which is how I like 'em). I also like Caroline a lot.
Blackberry: Marionberry is the best; Triple Crown is close if picked dead ripe.
Blueberry: I haven't noticed a lot of difference I have to say. One of my bushes I like a bit more than the others: Ivanhoe. I had thought Rubel would be great, a smaller berry with more flavor. But it is too lacking in acid for my tastes.
Gooseberry: Poorman when picked dead ripe. Yum!!

Scott

chills- coz "aint it" is very much an englishsm- innit

For me, the best overall berry (flavor) is a toss-up between a fully ripe Loganberry or Bristol black raspberry.

(I pulled out all of my Loganberries years ago, cause it was just too hard to get them fully ripe or get many berries from them)

Best blueberry for me - Duke or Darrow (I like them large and sweet)
Best raspberry (other than black) - Fall gold (Have tasted an exceptional red raspberry that I have been trying to find, but was not able to obtain varieity name - it is not Heritage, which I grow and find disappointing)
Best gooseberry (from 15 varieities) - Hinnomaki red (Best yellow/green is H. yellow, best purple is Black Velvet)
Best Strawberry - white runner berry from Edible Landscaping - forget the name...

Best overall small fruit for flavor - fully ripe Cornelian cherry var "Yellow" or "Pioneer" (very close in flavor)

I grow raspberries and blackberries, but I rarely get any to eat. But I love them. One yummy fall variety is Autumn Bliss which comes on a week earlier than Heritage, I am told. Where I live that would be a problem if the deer and dogs didn't come out so early in the morning to eat them.

I can't say much about the others, but I bought four types of strawberries two years ago: Quinault, Sequoia, Tri-star, and Hood. The first two had very poor production of both berries and stolons; they're not worth the space they take up in the beds and will get ripped out this summer. Tristar and Hood have been very prolific. The berries are smallish but taste terrific, and the plants make up for size with quantity. They have also increased at an astonishsing rate. At the end of the first summer I had 6 times as many plants and now I've lost track of how many there are. There doesn't seem to be any distinguishing characteristics between the two, they are both great.

My Dad got a start of what was said to be "Brazos Best" type of blackberry. They spread profusely and bear very heavily. The berries are large and nicely sweet (in my opinion). They will bear in early May.

This is encouraging, I'm getting ready to plant 'Triple Crown' & 'Navajo' blackberries. I have several blueberry varieties, but they're still tiny & haven't produced much.

I'm so glad you posed this question. I've been trying to decide what to buy, and so far (wthouth the benefit of this thread) I am leaning towards:

Raspberry: Heritage (though doesn't sound as if many of you are excited by it), Fall Gold, Ann and Caroline.
Strawberries: Earlyglow, lateglow and delmarvel
Wild/alpine strawberries: Yellow wonder, mara des bois (if I could find them), Ruegen
Fig (I know it isn't on the list): Hardy Chicago, Brown Turkey, LSU Gold, Petite Black

I am looking for varieties with the best flavor, but they need to grow successfully in my area and not be disease prone.

I'll go with strawberry then rasberry.

But Al, what varieties do you like?

happy- i too grew heritage and found them pretty bland though pretty productive- i ripped them up after 1 season.
i have found that nurseries who cater primarily to walk in tend to sell fruit varieties that can be easily forced into bloom to catch the customers eye, but the fruit is pretty bland.
ive learned that it is better to shop on line where you can research the most flavorful varieties, and even if the plants may be smaller, and thus take a year or two extra to fruit, the wait is worth it-
i ordered a purple raspberry from millers- i thinks its called royalty- was excellent- very flavorful

GG: Thanks for the suggestion -- the Miller site certainly makes "Royalty" sound tasty -- good to know it really is! I'll buy some for sure!

Actually the royalty was delivered as a bare cane late in the season (i ordered late)- mabe june and a couple of months later, it had quite a few berries- so overall im a huge fan of royalty- very large tasty berries and super quick to fruit- if u plant, please let us know what u think

I definitely will -- I am very swayed by your comments.

I had been looking for a long time for a highly-praised French strawberry named Mara des Bois (see Scott F Smith's comment above). I finally found it -- but it took some work.

I read that Sierra-Cascade Nursery, Inc. carried them (472-715 Johnson Road, Susanville, CA 96130, Tel: 530-254-6867, Fax: 530-254-6166). They said to call their local distributer, Skip Larson, 562-947-0187; cell 805-377-4653.
Skip said they sold the work to Wicked Wilds, Inc. 509 South Cedros Avenue Suite E, Solana Beach, CA 92075 858.755.7650, fax 858-755-7697. It is run by David Shelf, http://www.wickedwilds.com/index.html.

I called Wicked Wilds this evening and spoke to Trish. She said they sell the plants, bare root, 20 plants for $20 plus fed ex second day shipping. No discount for quantity purchases, though the Fed Ex rate isn’t much higher because the plants don’t weigh much. She said they would bear fruit in 2-3 months after planting. She recommended replacing them annually because production will drop off.

White Flower Farm also sells them, but for 3 plants for $24.95. See http://www.whiteflowerfarm.com/29205-product.html.

I have placed an order, and I am delighted!

happy- do u know anyone that sells capron musk- raintree have sold out

To provide a little counterpoint Malcomb, I pulled my Royalty's last fall. They were getting more diseased than other kinds and I found the reds and blacks to have a more intense flavor. Certainly worth a try though, they are unique compared to the reds or the blacks.

I also got my Mara des Bois from Wicked Wilds. Their plants are excellent quality and worth the money if you space them widely enough - they will fill in quickly. My 25 plants from last summer are now filling 75' of row.

Scott

Scott: That's interesting -- Wicked Wilds told me the production would lag in future years. Maybe you get more, but less productive, plants. Obviously, I hope they are wrong! And thanks for the comment about disease and the Royalty -- I run from disease-prone plants -- but I still may give it a try.

GG123456 -- You can get one Capron (literally) at http://www.rareplantnursery.net/catalog.html#s-v. I just emailed them, and they said their supply is limited, apparently in part because of vole damage -- which is excellent to know because we seem to have some voles -- so they are limited the sales to one apiece. I'm going to try sprinking hot pepper around, to see if that will deter the voles.

This message was edited Mar 13, 2007 8:27 AM

Macomb to clarify the Royalty diseases were not on the plant, they were the berries rotting in the rain. They are a softer berry and rot easier. If there is no rain around picking time they do fine.

I think the WIcked Wilds person was telling you the standard line about strawberries: as they get older they get diseased and productivity lags. Also it is hard to keep the bed well-maintained in terms of thinning out the oldest plants and letting the runners take over. The plants they send you are nothing but runners from disease-free plants.

Scott

Scott: Thanks for the clarification -- I don' t know enough about berry culture. Is there any way for a home gardener to keep plants from getting diseased?

I found that the Royalty raspberry [purple] made a huge berry. I had to wait for the berry to turn from reddish color to purple to be sweet enough for me. Then, like Scott said, they didn't hold very long before spoiling or being eaten on by insects. Also the flavor is somewhat bland IMO.

Indy: You wrote: "Raspberry....I like the Bristol black, two reds of which one is Caroline, and Fall Gold." Do you recall the name of the other red you liked?

happy_macomb,
I don't know the name of the other red. It was given to us by a lady about 1970. She has since passed on. I really love that one. I have looked at new introductions that came out in the 1960s as that is likely when it was released. It bears one early summer crop a year. Releases about that time were Killarny and Boyne but ??? Anyway Indiana Berry Co. rates a couple of new varieties as of excellent flavor....Nova and Prelude.

I worry that newer varieties are developed for longer "holding" power on the shelf rather than flavor . . .

Macomb I find the newer raspberries are also very good in the flavor department, unlike other fruits. I had thought that the oldies Taylor, Royalty, and Heritage would be the best so thats what I started with. My Taylors and Royalties are already gone and Heritage may go soon as well. The only older one that held up for me was the Jewel Black Raspberries, they are great.

Indy's comments above match my experiences with the Royalty: they are soft so are just more suceptible to predation by diseases and bugs, and it gets way out of hand when rain is added to the mix.

I have a few plants of Prelude and it is an outstanding berry - highly recommended.

Scott

Thanks!

By the way, is there any downside to planting different raspberry or strawberry cultivars close together?

I don't see any disadvantage to planting them close and I do it a lot myself. I made a test bed of raspberries with half a dozen cultivars two years ago which was fun and easy and informative (winners: Josephine, Caroline, Prelude; losers: Fall Gold and Kiwi Gold). The main thing is to keep them from mixing up with each other. I put flags in the ground so I knew the dividing line, and wrote down what was in what order. I also did the same for strawberries and just ripped up my test bed last fall to replace it with the kinds I liked best (Mara des bois and Suwannee plus I have a separate bed of Earliglow).

Scott

Excellent, thanks!

Happy, did you get (or want) any other strawberry plants? Southern States has them in now, about $9 for 25 plants. After much "option anxiety" I went with 'Sparkle' (June) and 'Ogallala' (everbearing) when I bought mine yesterday. They did have the 'Earlyglow' and 'DelMarvel' that you mentioned.

I have black and red raspberries in the same bed simply because Miller sold them to me as a "family berry patch." Then I read that the two colors of raspberries should be planted 100 feet apart if possible, because the black ones are succeptable to diseases that the red ones might be carrying. *sigh* Well, so far so good, so I'll just cross my fingers!

Thanks, Critter -- I bought mine for the season -- I'll just invite myself over and try yours when they are ripe!