any suggestions on raspberry? i heard red and yellow are good. black and purple might have issues. what are some good ones? i have been told since i was little in korea that raspberry attract snakes. is that true? 

Snakes? LOL! Sometimes those old wives kill me.

yeah.. but who knows.. we used to call them snake strawberry or mountain strawberry in korea. used to find them in the mountain while hiking. rare treat. 

I like 'Heritage' and 'Fall Gold'. Both are everbearing types, so you can either get 2 crops per year, or just mow the whole patch to the ground in winter and get cropping late summer to fall.

Pete, Let me send you the best-est raspberry you can ever have. I am fussing with them for some ten years.  I like the flavor of my tays, but after have Caroline and Anne, humm, those are incredible.  ( I can send you some now, this is the time to plant them) they do not transplant well, but are great plants to have) I owe you and this could be a tiny pay back... send me PM if interested.

I got a few from UCDavis and Indiana Berry.  And from some nice forum Members, but those are tiny and not ready for sharing yet (purple, black, golden queen)

I say multiple varieties and colors, just like figs, there are things you will like about different varieties. IMO, you need 2 beds also. One for Everbearers and one for July bearers.

Everbearers will grow on this years wood and last years wood, there are different ways to handle them but I subscribe to cutting them off at ground level each fall. Caroline (red), Anne(gold), are just a couple of examples, most raspberries fall into this catagory.

July bearers, these are more like black berries in the sense that you get berries from last years growth only. And after they fruit and draw energy back out of the cane you cut them off at the ground. A little more work because you have to care for canes, but one of my favorites is a July bearer. Tulameen are big and sweet with good raspberry flavor, Meeker grows like nuts and the berries are midle of the road. I think Royalty is in this category, but not 100% sure; last year was my first year with it. I cut it off at the ground when I planted it and it still sent up one small flowering shoot, anyhow the berries were fantastic.

Jewel black, even though you said might be an issue , I'll give thoughts on this one too. For me, and this may be due to planting location, it didn't grow well for the first 3 years. It grows primo and floracanes. The first year it fruited it had miserable seedy little berries that weren't worth a dang. Last year saw a massive improvement, the berries were 30% bigger and the flavor was very rich. I am looking forward to this years harvest.

thank you so much grasa :) PM sent!

with raspberry and blueberry going.. i'll be eating lot of cold cereals x) lol

I used to work on a berry farm, I always liked eating the gold ones.

Here is something I posted about snakes around blackberries a while back, "When we moved to KY we had lots of wild blackberries around where we put the building. I wanted to leave them for the birds... but! The default setting for snake was copperhead. We had lots of them, and big ones. I tried relocating them and when I tossed one into a blackberry thicket I finally figured out what was going on. It disappeared with me staring right at it. They are perfectly camouflaged to hide in blackberry leaf litter. They were getting fat ambushing the birds that were eating the blackberries. The vast majority of snakebite cases in the South happen to people picking wild blackberries. Your hand is about the size of a bird. Okay? Another reason for not picking the low hanging fruit. The wife found herself within striking distance a couple of times and I had to mow the brambles. If the cook ain't happy, ain't nobody happy! I mulch my raspberries with straw, keep them staked up, and don't let leaf litter build up under them. We hardly ever see a copperhead anymore, now a-days it's mostly king-snakes, which eat copperheads.

BTW, you can get about four times the production, from raspberries, by pruning the first year canes so that they branch more for when they set fruit in the second year. I expect that would work for blackberries too."

For taste I prefer the gold or the wild black. I have some of an old variety I dug from a homestead in the N GA mountains. They've been identified as Wineberries. Very thorny, but the foliage is like a regular raspberry. The berries have an orangeish tint and grow in clusters. They spread by "walking". Might trade some for fig cuttings.

I've got three varieties of red that were given to me by friends. They had no clue what they were. But they are great. One bed in it's 3rd year, and others in large containers. They produce surprisingly a lot. I had two raspberries that ripened last week - very early. Yum.

If you get too many berries of any type, you can make vinegar infusions, which taste great on salads and other dishes, and are very easy to make.

Oh, snakes. We have 3 main species here and I have yet to see one in the raspberries. But it would not be a surprise.

Don't know if anyone here has had Spotted Winged Drosophila (SWD) hit their berries yet, but my fall crop of raspberries was affected badly last season here in Western PA.  The summer crop was OK, not sure if the fruit flies were not in the area yet or if the crop matured before they emerged.  But I got only a couple unaffected berries out of an established large patch in the fall.  All of the berries had the SWD larve in them.  I had never seen them before in my area, but from what I have heard once they are established they are a permenent resident.  I think there may be some kind of sprays that help, but I have never had to spray my berries for any kind of pests before.

Never saw snakes in my berry patch, by the way.  I would prefer them to the SWD.

Pete,
Anne (yellow) and Caroline (red) have done well here in the rain, heat, 30+ degree temperature swings, and humidity of 8B. I have two Earthboxes of Anne and one EB of Caroline. Both are very productive and grow to 8+ feet tall each year. I like the taste of the Anne much more than Caroline. Based upon some low level looking, I.e., comments from others with similar growing environments, I planted purple (Royal) and Black (Bristol) this spring in EBs as a trial.

i heard SWD is in NC. but i haven't seen them on figs. never had berries before, now i have blackberry, blueberry and soon raspberry. will have to see if i can spot them. it would be a shame...

i'll try red and yellow, thanks to grasa :), and see if it works here. if it does, i'll have to look for Kiwi Gold and some black and purple raspberries too. 

I am no expert in raspberries (only had some quite a long time ago).
At this time of year, I had/have seen them available in both HD and Loews.

I have been delighted with my "Heritage" red raspberries. They grow like weeds and produce very well. I would give you several potted plants if you lived near me. I can't bear to just cut them down, and they will take over my yard if I don't so something, so I am digging up some and forcing myself to cut some back.

I suggest you do "Heritage" for a summer crop and "Anne" for the fall. That way you have two crops per year. Just read up about the different ways summer and fall crop varieties need to be pruned - they are different.

My Heritage are so prolific I dig-up and give away 15-20 starter plants every spring. They sent out suckers like crazy! If the lower side of my yard was not so wet I would start another raspberry bed in it. I love these things!

Kiwi Gold sounds very nice. will have to look into it.

The depot has orange and purple raspberries. I think they have heritage as well. I have some that were given to me two years ago by a friends mom that did great the first year. I cut them down in the fall and did not get fruit the following year. Hope to get some this summer, they were really good.

I had raspberries in NC, nothing bothered them and they spread like wildfire. I brought hundreds up to KY. I'd plant them, they'd send up shoots, and when the shoots were 10 or 12 inches tall something (I think rabbits) would nip them off about an inch above the ground. Not eat them, just cut them off and leave them lay. The very few I have left are caged in.

Here is a picture of wineberries walking over the fence. The tips are rooted where they touched down. I've measured some canes at 14', talk about spreading by leaps and bounds. So far I only see one of the tips chewed off so I guess they only get nipped when they come up, not when they come down. I'm going to prune the canes to get them to branch and move the rooted tips to pots till they get bigger. I mulch up to the top of the concrete curb once a year

 

I have Heritage and Anne planted them last spring.  l got lot's of berries last summer/fall and they are coming up everywhere this year.  I have another type that I can't remember the name of now started at least 20 years ago.  I had them in beds and done awaiy with the bed in order to plant more vegetables years ago.  Somehow they just were alway 1 or 2 surviving plants all these years.  Last year I hunted thru the weeds and came up with 2 or 3 and planted them in a new bed.  They are more of a running type vine instead of a standing cane like Heritage and Anne.

I have no skin in the game but if you are looking to plant several I had a great experience with Nourse nursery.  The finest plants I have ever received from a nursery and would definetely order from them again.

Oh I forgot to tell you to me the Anne a yellow berry tastes a little sweeter than Heritage a red berry.  Neither of them really have a tart raspberry taste to me though.  I hope to have some on the old vines this year to compare taste. I would prefer a really tart berry for my next variety.

one question. i know raspberry and blackberry have ton of seeds. last time i remember eating raspberry from supermarket and got really distracted by the seeds. they were hard as rock and not crunch like seeds in figs. does it make difference if i grow them at home? it seems my wife and older son just ignore them. but for whatever reason, i noticed every one of them. then much later, i had blackberry at one of the better restaurants in town, and i didn't notice the seeds at all.. weird.. 

Hi,
Incredible how raspberry classification is similar to figs with unknowns and mislabeled ones :

I have 4 raspberrys strains:  2 unknown raspberries ( 1 good and 1 I'm trying to get out of the garden as it doesn't produce anything except canes ) , plus a "Jumbo" and a "fallgold not".
The fallgold was bought as such but doesn't fruit yellow - so "fallgold not" .
Last year was a misery here for raspberries and they did not fruit at all - All of my neighbors were in the same boat.
3 years ago I started Muroisiers/loganberries - and I'm much more happy with those. I could make jam out of them last year.
Raspberry and loganberry spread themselves like weeds.
And bullet08, there is a loganberry said to be named after the queen of UK - it is the thornless variety and makes flowers one by one instead of bouquets of flowers- I have both as I had to test them myself, having nobody around that had them already . From what I've seen the queen's one is less productive ... Normal I suppose, a queen ain't suppose to be too productive :P.
Luckily, I don't have snakes but be it loganberries or blackberries I always remove all flowers stems (those grow the second year from the main canes) under 50 cm of height as with their weight those berries would touch the dirt .
I always keep the dirt under those berries clean with no weeds as this helps the newshoots comes out better.

A note of interest on raspberry seeds (my wife hates them too). I used to run my raspberries through a juicer that took the seeds out and then make jelly from the juice. But, raspberries have two powerful antioxidants and one of them is found mostly in the seeds. If you are "eating for health" you should leave the seeds in your raspberries.