Dana: What were the forces that impelled you to plant 10 different raspberry varieties at the same time? Are you planning to run variety trials? If you are a beginner, and it does sound that way, it would have been better to start with one or two carefully chosen varieties. Red and yellow raspberry varieties propagate and spread by underground rhizomes, while black raspberries reproduce and spread by tiprooting. If you planted 10 varieties, I hope you have a lot of space, since you will want to keep them planted well apart from each other, defined as roughly 6 feet. Otherwise, they will quickly grow together, and you will lose track of which variety is which, to your great regret. The yellow variety Fallgold is a particularly aggressive spreader, and after about 3 years in the ground is easily capable of spreading 6 feet or more from the original planting. Out of these 10 varieties, some will no doubt be successful for you, but others will be failures or the quality of the fruit may not meet your expectations. At that point, you will want to be able to completely remove the losers, and keep the winners, but you can't do that if they are all mixed up. TCStoehr is correct that the original canes on your plants are 2nd year canes, or floricanes, that will normally leaf out and may bloom and set a few berries. Meanwhile, the new canes for this season will emerge from underground. Many "everbearing" varieties, such as the Fallgold and Heritage that you named, are capable of growing up and producing on primocanes in late summer of the first season. The black variety Cumberland, however, will not bear on floricanes until next season, defined as 2010. Whether you remove the original canes from your plants or leave them is nearly irrelevant. It just won't make much difference. If your raspberry purchases also included some summerbearing varieties (i.e. Latham, Taylor), these will not bear the first season, but will also bear in 2010. You really should have done some prior investigation about raspberries before jumping into this 10-variety situation, since there are, as you can see, significant differences in the growth and production habits of the various varieties. To make the best of the situation now, about all you can do is to ensure that the varieties are carefully kept separate, so that when they grow up you are able to make the decisions on what stays and what goes. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

I have several varieties of Autumn bearing raspberries which are just ripening the last few floricane berries. I plan to prune out the floricanes as soon as I pick off the last berries. The already-fruited canes just look weary and used up and I suspect that they are an attractive host for disease and insect pests. They also crowd the patch inhibiting air circulation. Their thorns are also the hardest and most brittle. The primocanes are growing very vigorously and I can't imagine the roots would miss the floricanes at all. Once the primocanes fruit on their tops I'll cut off the top fruiting portion, again as soon as I've harvested the last berry. I'll leave the lower portion to fruit early next year again. I love raspberries too much to "mow" everything down and forgo the floricane crop, however small. They are my first ripe fruits in the garden.

I Recently attended an OSU class on berry cultivation. Even though I don't want to grow them, the information was very interesting and too extensive to print here: at least 20 cultivars of raspberries and about the same for blackberries. For a plethora of information, download the following Oregon State University publications: EC 1303 and EC1306. Blackberries and raspberries respectively. Just google "osu 1303" and "osu 1306". You will be the berries!! Good luck. Here is a link that might be useful: OSU

I have dining room chairs that are almost exactly like yours. Mine are gorgeous cherry wood and the only difference is my back dips down where yours curves up. I wouldn't paint them, the wood is gorgeous. Mine are sturdy as all get out. The set you posted is cheap on Craigslist because folks don't want "brown" formal furniture anymore. I have seen pictures and decorating shows that have those kind of chairs painted and considered painting mine. I decided if it ain't broke don't fix it. I am going with their beauty and positive aspects in my dining room. There's something cool about formal dining rooms. But if you don't like that look at all, why buy formal dining chairs and try to change them? Buy something informal that is made to look informal instead of trying to put a round peg into a square hole. On the flips side, my wood looks good, but if that set has old worn crappy finish then painting is not that much of a tragedy. Oh, and P.S. if you don't want the ones without arms, I would take them in a heartbeat, but I don't know where you live, probably too far away. I don't like the look of mismatched chairs and I am two armless chairs short for my set. My DR is too small for the armed chairs and I am thinking about taking off the arms of mine, but if I move I might regret it. Here's a photo of mine. Of course they will be recovered when I get the time. Those shorter modern ones I would paint in the heartbeat, the wood is nothing special. I'm not painting them because I intend to eventually rotate them out. These photos are just ones I posted for ideas on how to redo my dining room. It's not how I envision it right now, it is a work in progress.