my wife loves to make different kinds of jelly and give it away at christmas time. I want to grow as many things as possible to make it fun. i want to grow blackberries, red rasberries, black raspberries, dewberries, logan berries. i love to watch things grow and want to try lots of different plants. but what should not be planted close together. or what will cross if its planted to close together.

-- randy wybrant (rwybrant@coin.org), January 15, 2002

Answers

Doesn't matter if you plant 2 or 299 berry plants in a plot. Every one of them wlll produce exactly as their roots tell them to. And this will go on for 100 years if the plants live that long. But if you have a seedling come up at the edge of your patch and the roots are not connected to a parent plant, you will have a hybid from two different plants. Could be junk or a variety that will cause all nurseries to junk their old stock and get cuttings off your new hybrid. Fruit from any berry or fruit tree will always be true to it's roots. Only the seed will be affected. Save seed from a favorite apple tree and you will end up with a totally new variety. (Granny Smith came from a pip in a compost pile in Australia!) Forests are full of hybrid raspberries from seeds dropped by birds on thei migration south. But these are second generation plants and not from rootstock plantings. My own red raspberries are a super hybrid that started with a seed possibly from Canada and dropped by a migrating grasshopper sparrow or otherwise. These now growing in 4 or 5 states as a super hardy and highly productive plant. Turned out to be a super hybird unlike anything else in the catalogs. Same time, neighbor has purple raspberries. Eventually, there was a plant that came up between us and allowed to mature. Huge pink-velvet fruit and about as tasty as tepid water! Perfect candidate to be removed from the gene pool of berries. Bottom line is this. Your berry plants do not have a choice as to what they will produce since that is determined by their roots. Enjoy!

Marty

-- Martin Longseth (paquebot@merr.com), January 15, 2002.

Thanks for posting my question:) I was wondering the same thing!! I am hoping to plant strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and boysenberries. I thought it would be neat looking to have a "berry patch" but didn't know if I could plant all of these close together with maybe just a wide walkway between them. Also does anyone have any suggestions for what variety to plant? I hope to be back home in TN by Spring. Thanks

-- Lou Ann in KY (homes_cool@msn.com), January 15, 2002.

We keep our berry patches at least 8 feet apart.

-- Ardie/WI (ardie54965@hotmail.com), January 15, 2002.

i wish i had also asked about different varieties of the same kind of plant. like two different kinds of raspberries or how about thornless and thorny blackberries

-- randy wybrant (rwybrant@coin.org), January 15, 2002.

Marty is right, you will only get berries that match your plant, the berries will not cross 'on the vine' so to speak, so you may want to lable the plants as you set them out, but the kind of berries will not change on the plant from year to year each will all ways grow it's own kind. The kind of crossing your thinking of happens in corn, but I can't think of any thing else that will do it.

-- Thumper (slrldr@yahoo.com), January 16, 2002.

After I sent that I thought to add that the reason for putting distance between berries is for disease protection, if one gets a virus the others may be spared, because the virus is often spread by water splashing or wet hands etc.

-- Thumper (slrldr@yahoo.com), January 16, 2002.