Vegetable Growers News
January-February 2000, Vol. 7, No. 1
Charlie O'Dell, Extension Horticulturist
Department of Horticulture
Virginia Tech (0327)
Blacksburg, VA 24061
In this region, older raspberry cultivars (varieties) such as Heritage were too late maturing, often 80% or more of the crop was lost to fall frosts before fruit ripened. Most growers abandoned such attempts to produce late-summer, early-fall raspberries even though they found very high customer acceptance for raspberries in this later part of the growing season.
Please take time to "read up" on development of newer primocane varieties. Some, like Caroline, Polana and Autumn Bliss, are much earlier than the older Heritage, allowing first harvests to begin as early as mid-August in many areas! Other fine fruit attributes include much larger berry size along with very fine flavor and appearance, features welcomed by growers, consumers, and produce buyers. Another exciting new primocane variety performance was reported by our Pennsylvania State University colleagues Barbara Goulart and Kathy Demchak from their several years' study, to be even later by some 5 days than Heritage, but to be of very large size and very high flavor. This new golden colored one will soon be commercially available, named Anne (named by our own Virginia raspberry breeder/researcher Dr. Herb Stiles for his wife, Anne).
Researchers at Cornell University led by Marvin Pritts and at Rutgers University led by Joe Fiola working with the late maturing older variety Heritage a few years ago, successfully used crop covers over the freshly mowed crowns in late winter to speed new primocane emergence and early season growth rate. They used the temperature-warming crop covers for the month of March, sometimes into early April (depending on spring's speed of arrival) to gain 2 weeks or more of earlier harvests compared to uncovered plots. We plan to work with this technique on this new variety Anne, because its outstanding size, appearance and flavor draw us to seek ways to make it productive in this region of cooler, shorter growing seasons! If necessary, we'll even trellis it and grow it as a summer-bearing type. Perhaps, like experimenting grower in Giles County, Virinia, Mr. Ralph Farley, we'll grow some by each production system in order to have fruit both early and late in the growing season.
You may wish to ponder a bit longer about these new varieties from the following 13 considerations. Please don't try this crop without drip irrigation! Thanks to the fine raspberry breeding team of Herb Stiles of Virginia Tech, Harry Swartz of the University of Maryland, Joe Fiola of Rutgers, and Brian Smith of the University of Wisconsin, consumers in this region may soon be able to find locally grown, flavor-packed late-summer raspberries. If these new varieties prove to be adaptable to both cooler and warmer areas of Virginia, our growers can begin successful production/marketing of this "new" crop of late-season raspberries to our growing hoards of affluent urbanites.
Some Primocane Raspberry Considerations
1. Test plant to determine adaptability of these new varieties to your area, start small.
2. High demand for locally grown raspberries, where/how will you market them?
3. Off-farm marketing requires forced-air refrigerated cooling and transport.
4. Long distance shippable only in 1/2-pint containers results in high prices.
5. For local sales may be picked and shipped pre-cooled in 1 pint containers, more sales.
6. Drip irrigation required in this region, harvesting August, September, October.
7. Not readily available in late summer from California, Mexico, NAFTA, WTO!
8. Raspberry growers in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Northern Virginia retail fresh-picked at $3. to $4. per pint.
9. A perennial crown, up to 8 years of production from 1-time establishment costs.
10. Grower-friendly, easy to manage, pruning and training by sharp mower in late winter.
11. No spring frost risk, can use lower frost pocket sites, blooms in summer.
12. Income can begin the same year from April planting helping recover plant costs.
13. Raised beds are recommended for control of Phytophthora Root Rot.
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