I'm going to try triple crown in a 24"x24" wood container I made. I'm planing on useing Al's gritty mix, with perlite instead of granite for the weight. filix. Good luck.

Erect or self-supporting blackberries have stiff arching canes--as opposed to trailing varieties. There are three thornless erect blackberry varieties you might try: 'Black Satin' which is tart; 'Chester' also tart; and 'Hull Thornless' which is sweet. Two thornless trailers are 'Boysen' and 'Logan.' Since you are growing in containers, thornless might be easier to handle.

Here is a link that might be useful: HarvestToTable.com

I'm a beginner. Would you please share details about your container raspberry success? What varieties? What size of container? How many plants per container? What did you use for soil? Did you leave your container above ground? Any other suggestions? Thanks.

I too want to hear more. What size container? Raspberries and Blackberries are my my favorite fruits, and of course the most expensive to buy at the store. I was spoiled growing up with my parent's giant berry plants.

I have 2 plants; 1 per pot. One pot is 14" and has a Fall Gold raspberry, and the other is 12" with a Heritage Red. Oddly, I never noticed that I had two different sizes of pots until I brought them inside to get a jump on the growing season last week. The Fall Gold was definitely a more vigorous plant, but it seemed to put out about the same amount of berries as the Heritage. One thing to note is that I prefer to receive my fruits over a long period of time, so both varieties are everbearing. Additionally, I noticed that the Fall Gold lagged behind the Heritage in fruiting by about 1 or 2 weeks, further improving the spread. I used Miracle-Gro organic potting soil and fertilized infrequently with Miracle-Gro vegatable fertilizer. I noticed that they needed to be watered fairly frequently, at least with my setup. They didn't usually show their thirst by wilting like tomatoes do; they just stopped growing. It took me a few weeks to figure this out. The containers were both above ground. Since I live in an apartment, on the bottom floor, most of my porch is shaded, so I only have about 20 square feet to grow in. For this reason, I put them on the railing surrounding the porch, where they received sun for about 8 hours a day. Since the plants weren't being grown in tight rows like they would in the ground, I didn't thin the plants nearly as much as is normally suggested. The idea was that they would sprawl out and hang over the railing to soak up some extra sunlight. The canes that hung over the back side into the shaded area got attached to individual pieces of twine that I ran from my rail to the bottom of the deck above, so that they were on a sort of quick and dirty trellis. I got about 2 handfuls of berries a day using this method and I think there would have been a lot more if I hadn't screwed up so much along the way. This year, I have ordered 2 Caroline raspberries from Edible Landscaping, which are supposed to be tastier, hardier, and 40% more productive than Heritage. By the end of the growing season, I had noticed significant collapse of the soil and both plants were much less vigorous. I am planning to use something along the lines of Al's Gritty Mix instead of a prepackaged mix this year and maybe a drip irrigation system to keep their moisture level more even, since I'm usually gone for 10+ hours a day and can't keep an eye on them. Hope this helps.

Thanks much. Seems that approach was pretty successful for first attempt and only two plants.

From the books that I have read, Arapaho or Navaho are supposed to grow best in containers. Arapaho is what I am planning on trying for DH