Blueberries are ideal for containers.. They need acidic soil, which is perfect environment to make in a container.. Get varieties that pollinate eachother... Grapes - need trellis, vines.. From my understanding, you can get the vine as short as 3-5 foot or as long as 20 ft... Rasp/blackberry - a trellis would contain thm very nice, a heavy layer of mulch would do great, and just mow over the extra runner.. With a trellis you can keep them contained to a small, certain space... $2.50 for a plant, good deal.. But a few of each.. And if anything, sell them for $5 bucks... Or better yet, take multiple cuttin and sell each cutting for a few bucks.. There's always money to be made, if your creative.. Joe

I got a "free" Jewel black raspberry from Raintree because I ordered before January 1st and spend enough money. It came in a tiny pot (I presume from tissue culture?). Very wimpy but had a note that it would grow like a weed. It sure did! This year being year 2, I finished picking the crop a week ago. Next year should even be better as the primocanes are much bigger stemmed and Lots of them. I did not realize how huge one raspberry plant could get. I am impressed. Even though I cut off all the tips of the primocanes late last summer when they got to ground level, a few got missed and rooted in giving me 4 free plants this year. A friend was very happy to receive them. My only bad news is birds! The fruit started to turn black but not sweet enough to pick. Suddenly 1/2 of the crop was gone. I assumed my children had picked them but they had not. I then netted the plant with black netting which was successful but some fruits had bird pecks in them. I had anticipated the neighborhood children might be the biggest problem to getting fruit not the birds. Next year I will be more diligent to net them as soon as they start turning ripe.

1. Grape spacing at 8ft is OK but your math may be wrong. You have 64ft (8x8) of grapes in a 50ft row. 2. Varies by spacing but I would go with two posts. 3. Yes. 4. Red raspberries, like Heritage, sucker freely and will continue to fill in all available empty space. If you are not going to put them in a raised bed, then put in a physical barrier to slow their spread into your blackberry area. You can use a few cinder blocks and dig down about 4-6â to set them. It wonâÂÂt fully prevent the red raspberry spread but it will keep it manageable. There are a number of online resources with pictures, measurements, and advice for grape trellises. I would highly suggest reviewing those if you have not already. You didnâÂÂt ask but IâÂÂm going to provide my opinion on your blackberry and raspberry selections (thatâÂÂs what we do in this forum). - Triple Crown is great but you need 8ft between the plants. - Black Satin is not so good. It will overlap your TC harvest in late summer and will likely get infested with SWD. The flavor is poor too. Try an earlier fruiting variety like Osage or Ouachita (3-4ft spacing) and you will have a longer period of blackberry production and avoid SWD on the earlier varieties. - There are newer varieties of red raspberry that are superior to Heritage. Both Prelude and Caroline would be very good choices for red raspberries.

Hmmm The perfect raspberry plant Well, IÂm up to 10 varieties now, with more coming in the spring, and IÂd say none is perfect, but all are pretty darn good. I mostly have many varieties to try to spread out my harvest. For an everbearing red, youÂll usually see Caroline recommended often here on this forum. For a gold/yellow raspberry, youÂll usually see Anne recommended most here. For a blackberry here, youÂll often see (thornless) Triple Crown recommended. If you search these forums for those varieties, youÂll probably get a lot of the info youÂre looking for. For Thornless raspberries, I do have ÂJoan JÂ. Other people have said that they didnÂt like the flavor of Joan J, but I find the flavor to be every bit as good as my other varieties. I have found that it isnÂt quite as vigorous as some of the other varieties. If youÂre looking for something unique, IÂd go with the yellow/gold raspberries mentioned above. I donÂt have Anne (planting that this coming spring), but I do have Kiwi Gold, and theyÂre some of my favorites. Or, better yet, I might not do 6 varieties, but maybe two? From what youÂve told me, so far, IÂd do a bed of Caroline and a bed of Anne, though those varieties are not thornless. But, I have a 4 year old, and a 2 year old, and they really have zero problems with the thorns. Both varieties are known for their superior flavor. Caroline is also known for having large berries and a large yield. My raspberries are almost care-free. If you get everbearing (fall) varieties, and not summer varieties, you can simply mow (or cut) them down once they go dormant and youÂll get one large crop. Or, you can leave them up over the winter, and prune the tops in the spring, and then get two (albeit smaller) crops. The birds basically leave my raspberries alone, although this is not true for many others. I suspect itÂs because I have a lot of wild ones growing nearby. I really havenÂt had any problems with diseases or insects. For me, in this area, they are by far the easiest fruit I grow but people (in different areas) have different growing experiences. Right, I always recommend some sort of trellis for your raspberries, though, IÂve never tried growing them around a stake. The one thing that you are going to have to take seriously is containment. Raspberries are like weeds, and they will spread and take over like something youÂve never seen. I have my beds against my lawn, so I can easily control them by going by with the mower. But, in your case, youÂre going to need to dig down 15-18" down and place a barrier. Raspberry roots can easily tunnel down 10" and travel for many feet underground. YouÂll want to do some research on this before you just plop them in the ground. I agree with Hines about what he said about the blackberries. I find them to be even more productive for a given amount of space, than the raspberries. And, I love Âem! But, 2 concerns 1) is that you need a really solid/beefy trellis for them. 2.) For me, it wasnÂt until their 3rd season that they really got going. You can probably get some raspberries at your local nursery, but this is an expensive way to do it (here itÂs $25 for a 1 gallon plant), and youÂll be stuck with limited (often inferior Heritage, etc) varieties. You really want to consider getting bare-root plants check out http://www.noursefarms.com/. IMHO, and from what IÂve read from others, they are pretty much known to be the best place to buy berries, certainly in the East, possibly in the country. They have a perfect rating last time I looked on Daves Garden Watchdog (which rates online nurseries) http://davesgarden.com/products/gwd/c/112/ Start doing research here on this site, and elsewhere on the internet, and IÂm sure youÂll have a great crop of berries in no time. Have fun! -Glenn