In my experience, none of the blackberries want to stay small! Oregon State University has info about ripening dates of known cultivars, so you could google that info and make your choices. I have discovered that alot of times, I have to bend myself around the plants I want, not the other way around :) If you ever run into Caroline raspberry, get it. It bears nearly continuously during the summer and fall. It is my wifes favorite. The yellow and gold raspberries usually taste nothing like the reds. For flavor I stick with the reds. Google the term "upright blackberries" including the quote marks, and discover what kinds are out there that may suit your fancy. Hey, try one of everything! Thats what we normally do. Then you can propagate out the ones you like the best. Some will really tickle your fancy, others you will just consider so-so in your location. It's all part of the fun. And you cannot really tell until you have tried them.

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 planted a number of the aforementioned varieties this springand all are growing rather well, especially the Triple Crown and Natchez. As a trailing variety the Triple Crown is being trained on a 6 ft. 2 wire trellis. The Natchez will later be on a 3-4 ft trellis but presently is tied on a single 5 ft. stake. I found on a couple sites that the Natchez needs tipping at ~4ft and the laterals dormant pruned to 18 to 24 in. I have done the tipping but now have laterals, some more than 4ft, and they are producing other sets of laterals. I would appreciate suggestions re. how to treat all this new growth -- do I need to pinch the laterals/sub-laterals or just let them grow and wait for the dormant pruning?

TC canes are variable as to how many laterals they form, but most of them do. Laterals will become evident at leaf nodes on the main cane during the active growing season before the canes are tipped. Sometimes these laterals start fairly close to the ground. If none are evident on a cane, tip-cutting the main cane should encourage laterals to form, but they will likely form high up on the cane near the pruning point. I would tip the main canes when they exceed the height of the cage, don't wait for any particular time of the season instead. My experience with TC is that once growth on a cane/lateral system stops for the year, it does not resume the following spring; instead, the fruiting stems and blossoms occur. In your Cal zone 10, they may behave differently. Repeated pinching of laterals can result in a maze of ever-smaller additional laterals through the growing season. In your limited space, perhaps you could try pruning the main cane when quite short and force the growth of smaller-diameter laterals that can be looped, like some of the other forum member's photos have shown for container growing. I'm not familiar with Boysen habits, but they should be easier to loop than TC. And it all boils down to how many berries do you want when trying for a certain total linear feet of laterals.