I am interested in the red and black raspberry, I do not have anything on your list - mostly amaryllis seeds/bulbs, daylily, iris, white wisteria...anything for trade or perhaps SASE? just let me know. Karla

I think the main concern is virus infections. Black raspberries can have a virus, and be relatively unaffected, but the virus can spread to the reds, and really harm them. (At least that's what I read.) I would try to find blacks that are certified virus free, and go for it. I would also try to keep them as far from one another as possible, maybe plant something between them? And clean your tools between working on the different varieties (pruning canes, etc.). If your selections are only for timing harvests, there are several options even within the reds for timing. Plant an early, a midseason and a late. And there are red "everbearing" varieties, that produce a summer and a fall crop. I have one and it just barely makes it in the fall, for the second crop, but you should have more time in Zone 6. The fall berries are usually eaten off the canes by my children, but they enjoy them all the same! Come to think of it, they are always eaten off the canes, and we never have any for jelly (which is why I wanted them!).

Native little wild blackberry often has the same 'white dust' on the new growth as the black raspberries. Just because 'all the sites' say a species has a particular characteristic doesn't mean that characteristic is going to definitively separate that species from all others. Species descriptions are maddeningly incomplete. And plants are variable.

When I was a kid on the farm we had a garden that was 250'long & 150' wide. On the backside of the garden Grandma had two rows of berry bushes running the full 250'. The first row was currants for the first 200',then 50' of gooseberries, and the second row was half & half, red raspberries & black raspberries. In addition to that there were dozens of small black raspberry thickets and huge blackberry thickets throughout our 90acre pasteur, and the occassional wild gooseberry thicket. In those days the men did the fieldwork on the farm and the women and children did the berry picking. I remember Grandma used to buy peanut butter that came packed in a nice little one gallon steel bucket, and when the peanut butter was gone she saved the buckets for the kids to use to pick berries. When it came time to start cutting grain we cut the grain with an old horse drawn McCormic grain binder, which cut the grain and bound it into bundles. We then had to stack all the bundles in small stacks called "Shocks" where it would dry for about a week before we loaded the bundles on wagons and hauled them in to the threshing machine where the grain was separated from the straw. As one might imagine, to us boys it was a sign of manhood to be selected to work on the threshing machine crew instead of berry picking with the women & girls. Usually you had to be at least 9 or 10 to work on the threshing machine because the entry level job was operating the sacker, to sack the grain in two bushel burlap bags, which weighed over 120lbs when full. I got to sneak in on the theshing crew when I was 6years old because Grandpa had taught me how to drive a team of horses, so I could drive team to pull the wagons while loading, then take the wagon to the threshing machine at the barn. I shall never forget my old team of horses. Dan & Fritz, two 8 or 20yr old Belgian draft horse geldings that were slightly disabled. Fritz was blind in both eyes and Dan was blind in his right eye, so as you might imagine, they worked very slow & methodical, which was perfect for a young teamster like me, especially when you consider that I was just barely as tall as the horses bellies....LOL. Sometimes when Grandma was planning to go over the hill and pick blackberries in the pasteur Grandpa would have me hitch my team to the box wagon. We would then put two or three empty 10gallon milk cans on the wagon to put the berries in and another ten gallon can full of fresh cold water from the spring so they had drinking water for the crew. I then had to load all the ladies and kids, then drive the wagon to where ever Grandma wanted the cans placed and set them off, then I had to return the wagon to the barnyard so they could load the sacks of grain on the wagon, then I hauled them to the grainery at the barn, and in mid afternoon one of the girls would come to announce Grandma was ready for me to come back and pick them all up and take them to the house. Of course while all that was happening one of the ladies, assisted by a couple of the kids stayed at the house and cooked supper for 15 or 20 hungry field hands and berry pickers who would be in for supper at 5pm, then at 6pm it was back to the barn to milk the cows, feed all the animals and do the barn chores for the night. And when we came in from the barn Grandma would great us in the kitchen with a huge cookie sheet covered with a home made buttermilk bisquit type of shortcake. She would break off a big chunk of the shortcake and top it with fresh berries and a light drizzle of fresh milk..it gets no better than that at the end of a hard day.