I'll say. I have both and "Caroline" has outshone the "Heritage" in my garden. I wish I'd planted more "C" instead of 'H"! The drought has made it tough on both plots this year and I've had to resort to a lot of hand-watering. I hope to get better results out of "H" next year.
Herbert

Allenwrench:

Heritage was given a good long trial here (over 4 years), and was so unproductive they were removed. I don't have Caroline (I grow only Baba red raspberry), but reports I have seen are much, much better than results from Heritage, both in terms of productivity and berry size.

Fallgold is also long gone here. They were very sweet, but unproductive and, I thought, lacked the flavor of the reds -- we depend on raspberries for jam making. They were also soft, and extremely attractive to ants. Finally, they were such aggressive growers that they were quickly out of control and threatened to take over the whole yard. I can control the reds with much less difficulty. There may be better yellow varieties out there, but I won't be trying them.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Should I nurse the H's, or get rid of them and replant C's in the same plot? I can't imagine get rid of the H unless I use an herbicide. I wouldn't fuss so much, but I REALLY amended that bed before I planted them. Nuke 'em, or nurse 'em?

Herbert

My Carolines are already starting to produce their fall crop and I just recently finished their spring crop! Caroline is very flavorful and very large [long]. I won't say that they are a bit tart, but I might add a little bit of sweetner.

Herbert:

Whether to get rid of your Heritage in favor of Caroline or some other variety is a judgment call that only you can make, based on your perception of their performance. For myself, when I am reasonably certain performance of a variety of any fruit is below par, I have seldom regretted ripping it out and starting over.

When I removed Fallgold, it took me an entire growing year cycle after digging them out to make sure they were all gone, applying Roundup to those few that sprouted later in the following season. Taking them out is a lot more work than putting them in.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

I have Heritage and I'm perfectly happy with it. I haven't tried Caroline but I wouldn't go through the work to remove Heritage just to try it.

Not to be dramatic---but I'd rip out those Heritage as fast as I can. I had Heritage and the Caroline are better in every way: tolerates drought, heat, no disease, big flavorful berries that keep coming and coming. Just prune the tips that have fruited and they will continue to fruit until the weather turns cold.

I'd say it is well worth it to give the Heritage the heave hoe and plant Caroline in their place.

Which is the one that you just mow off in the fall or winter? How do you guys keep the weeds out of the raspberries? I have really missed out on not having some berries planted.
Raspberry, blueberry, what else would you include in a basic berry patch. I trust you guys a lot more than simply going to a catalog.

Hi Geraldo-

I've been posting this quite a bit lately, but for any fall (everbearing) raspberry, you can mow it in the dormant season and then you'll just get one larger fall crop. Or, you can prune them like summer raspberries and get an early crop and then a later crop. Caroline is what a lot of people recommend here on the forum. Maybe try a Kiwi Gold or Anne as a yellow raspberry too?

You definitely want some blackberries. People here usually recommend Triple Crown. I find I get much more of a yield from the blackberries than I do the raspberries.

Knock on wood, the thing I like about the raspberries and blackberries is that because I have wild berries nearby, the birds leave them alone. So, with no animal issues, and no disease issues for me, they are really just plant and eat. Pretty care free. Do make sure you have a solid trellis though.

As for weeds... The first year, you do get a couple weeds... so I put down just a little bark mulch. The 2nd year, only a few weeds, and by the third year, raspberries out-compete any weeds. They are the weeds!

Good luck!
-Glenn

Allenwench
I planted 25 H and 25 C side-by-side and C is clearly a better variety. We ate some of both today. I'll be expanding the C's and restraining the H's.
Definitely harder to remove than plant.
Jim B

Ok, Glenn, Caroline and Triple Crown it is. I will cover them with bird netting as the birds are getting bad around here. Solid trellis, I know what that means and I like the sound of it. :)

Cool. Have fun!
-Glenn

Thanks for all the great feedback.

I tried some C and H. The C does make big berries. The H stands upright better. It seems like the H produces a little earlier than the C, so that may be a reason to have both for more continuous production. I am happy with both.

I was ready to put in some Fall Gold next year. Sounds like they are not good. I do have some Anne and really like them. though they are planted in an area that does not do good.

I pulled out my strawberries and plan to put brambles in their place. The strawberries got too weedy.

Also had one black rasp, lots of growth and thorns, low berries..it got pulled out.

Have 2 Autumn Britton, but again they are in a poor spot and sickly with little sun (4 1/2 hours) but they produce nice big berries.

Am looking forward to next year when the bramples should really produce lots. Today am making another berry bed on the side of my house. Again low sun, but will see what grows there. If berries don't cut it I will plant lettuce or beets.

BTW, gooseberry and currants worked out very poor on the side of my house with 4 hours of sun. Plan to move em. They are dying or stunted there.

I have been wanting to plant strawberries in vertical stacks. They have a name for them, but I can't think of it. You use potting soil or some kind of clean soil, perhaps heat treated or something. You can put a large number of them in a small area. I think it is just the thing for strawberries. I don't like stoop work, either. And I don't like to weed a garden.

Can anybody tell me if fall gold is a good raspberry to plant in the Chicago area. And if they taste good?

Fall Gold is not a very productive raspberry and no one I know has kept it after trying it except a client that planted them in the relative shade. For some reason they are better producers here with less sun- at least in this one case.

I have found, by the way, that mowing canes for a larger fall crop is a mistake, at least if you are not pampering your berries. The canes are stronger, more drought resistant, and better able to out-compete weeds if you allow them to grow naturally. This is as grown in the northeast.

I am one of the few remaining fans of Heritage. No other raspberry has proven to function longer and better under adverse conditions although I haven't given Caroline a fair shot.

I have to admit to being only a moderate fan of raspberries, however. They are way too much work here for too little fruit. Blueberries and to a lesser degree, black currants, are the only small fruit I consider really worth growing because you can easily exclude weeds. I spend too much time in other peoples orchards to grow anything I consider inefficient on my own property. Small fruit takes so much time to harvest it better not take much time to care for. Now if I lived in coastal CA I'd grow lots of brambles. They are much more productive under a cooler sun.

I find in my climate (central NC) that caroline clearly outperforms heritage. Caroline has larger berries that taste as good or maybe even better than heritage. Caroline also spreads like mad and I have to stay on top of it to keep it from taking over the entire garden but it is very productive. I also grow fallgold but like others have said it is not overly productive but it is the sweetest raspberry I have ever tasted and I like the flavor a lot. Unfortunately the berries tend to be quite soft. Anne is a very productive yellow raspberry for me and has nice large berries that are sweet with an undertone of banana at least to my taste.

I have a 20 year relationship with Heritage at several sites. It is only after about a decade that I feel I can at all accurately rate a cultivar. This doesn't stop me from doing it anyway, of course.

It's a little like the difference between infatuation and love. We become infatuated with a cultivar very quickly after just one great crop. I wish people would add how long they've grown the cultivars they've endorsed so I could determine if their enthusiasm is truly love.

Harvestman, I've been growing Heritage for 3 years and Caroline for 2. I think Caroline does taste better, but I keep Heritage around partly based on your experience with it. Another advantage of Caroline that you might be interested in is that (at least in my VA loamy red clay), Caroline spreads very quickly (as stated above) and, therefore, chokes out the weeds a lot quicker than Heritage. I'd say it is at least twice as vigorous.

I am going to give Caroline another shot. I'm most interested in how it endures. I have a Heritage patch that has survived my neglect for almost 20 years and I have a client with a 30 year old plot. Nothing else I've tried has this kind of endurance but you make Caroline sound like a possible successor. I have tried Caroline on a couple of sites and on one of them the owner didn't manage deer, on the other it hasn't grown nearly as vigorously as Heritage. This is a fairly shady spot.

All my heritage have been diseased the last 2 years . Can I cut them to the ground this fall in hopes that new canes next spring will do better?