Primocane bearing raspberries, such as Heritage, will give you a summer crop and a fall crop. If you selectively prune the bushes as opposed to mowing them in the fall.

I had planned on physically dividing the sections with a board. Especially since the blueberries need much more acidic soil. I hadn't thought about the raspberries popping up in the other section. The strawberries I figured if a runner tried to jump into another bed I would just cut it off.

You can double crop primocanes but the amount of early fruit is not as much as you'd get from floricanes. In my garden the primocanes don't actually produce any early fruit due to the microclimate on the plot.

Put the raspberries in an end section, surrounded on 3 sides by the raised bed. It would then be easy enough to just shovel prune anything coming up in the adjacent section. Also arrange the berry varieties in straw, blue, and rasp order and in an arrangement that a taller variety will not cast shade on a lower variety.

If your bed's long axis is east-west, then shading is not a concern.

The bed will be facing east-west.

For the blueberries I'm a bit confused with the pollination. To make sure I understand should I be selecting 2 of the same plant, Since I'll only have the space for 2 in my 4x5' area? So I need to select 2 plants that blossom/bloom and bear fruit at the same time instead of one early and one late, since cross pollination wouldn't work to well correct?

Hi bschlund,

From the blueberry books and guides that I have read. To get more juicy berries, you'll need to have 2 blueberry plants of different cultivar that blooms around the same time. For example. The misty cultivar is an early season variety that blooms around the same time as O'neal. Both are southern highbushes and can cross pollinate with one another. Do keep in mind that some northern and southern highbush can also cross pollinate - depending on the variety. Rabbiteyes can only cross pollinate with other rabbiteyes.

Just to be safe, choose 2 different cultivars of blueberry plants from the same family, southern highbush, northern highbush or rabbiteyes.

I've done raised bed on all of these in the North East. I split down middle or cut in half those blue barrels people use for rain water supported by wood frames, after they grew large enough. Put lots of holes in bottom and sides for air flow and mix up planting medium on the acidic side. Although I have traditional plants I've forced into containers, there are new varieties of raspberry, blueberry and blackberry specially bred for containers for more options and dont need as much space. Dont over buy since they will grow and increase production as they mature. I went from a couple of pints to several quarts and nearing gallons of blueberries now.

See what varieties your local nursery has first to make sure they grow in your zone then find the right price. Some place ship twigs so read reviews. Although raspberries can get fruit first year quality may be off from planting and strawberries should be allowed to grow first year and fruit 2nd. Blueberries 2-3yrs for fruit unless you buy a mature plant already loaded.

I've been picking fruit since end of May. Caroline raspberries which I get quarts from are taking a break as of last Monday but I already see new flower buds forming. I get 2 cycles from them May/June to Aug and then usually end of Sept to just before snow in Dec. There's also Fall Gold variety to extend season.

I have several kinds of blueberries which flower about the same time but fruit matures at different rates. Patriot and Premier are finishing up fruiting but Top Hat and Sunshine Blues are changing color now. Top Hat/Northsky are good to help out with pollination since they stay small and can fit in ordinary pots and be put anywhere.

Strawberries are in beds, towers, pots wherever... they are not that picky and you can control growth by pinching runners or weaving back into beds if you want more plants. Plant some June bearers and some Everbearers so picking will overlap and everbearers will go July usually till fall.

By they way what zone are you?

I am in zone 5a.

My biggest question now is which 2 blueberry plants would be the best to work together. For some reason I'm having a hard time understanding/deciding on that. Any help in that regard would be great.

Samsaraedu, your blue barrels sound like containers rather than raised beds so the cultural techniques would be different. I believe the OP is going to make raised beds. Bschlund, are your beds going to be directly on the ground? Or will they have a base and thus become containers?

It's going to be another long post. I don't live in the U.S, so I haven't got a clue on how cold or warm zone 5a is.

The most important thing when deciding the right blueberry cultivar for your area is - how many chill units/hours do you get (on average) in winter? Blueberry plants need to expose to a certain amount of chill hours over winter in order to bloom and fruit properly in spring and summer. If they don't get enough chill hours, they will produce very small amount of berries or not at all.

To find out how much chill hours you're getting in your area. Go here. http://getchill.net/

click on the wunderMap to locate a weather station near you, write down the station name and type it in the fields on the getchill website. Check the total winter chill hour for each year, 2014, 2015 and 2016. There might not be any weather data for the older years.

Chill units/hours are temperature between 33 to 45 degree fahrenheit, or 0 to 7.5 degree celcius. Temperature below freezing or above 48 degree will not count or add to the accumulated chill hours.

Northen highbush cultivar is high chill and requires between 800 to 1000 chill hours and can tolerate below freezing temperate in winter. Southern highbush cultivar is low chill and only requires anywhere from 150 to 400 chill hours. While rabbiteyes requires 400 to 700 chill hours.

You can grow southern highbush and rabbiteyes in high chill/cold area just as long they are protected from frost and extreme cold temp in winter and early spring. You can't grow northern highbush in warm area because they won't break dormancy if they don't get enough chill hours, hence delay in vegetative bud break and growth in spring.

I live in Melbourne Australia and we get an average of 750 to 850 of chill hours in winter. We don't get snow but we do get frost every now and then on clear cold night. I have collected 19 different varieties so far, 6 northern highbushes, 8 southern highbushes and 5 rabbiteyes.

It's currently mid winter here and all my northern highbushes have shed their leaves (half of them lost their leaves by late autumn). Most of my southern highbushes still have their full leaves. So far, None of the rabbiteyes lose any leaves, I noticed the leaves are much thicker and waxy looking than northern and southern highbush cultivar's.

I grow all my blueberries in plastic containers and so it's very easy for me to move my sourthern highbushes inside the greenhouse when the temp is expected to drop below freezing. I put them all on the trolley and drag them in, It's good exercise :)

If you are planning to grow your blueberries in soil, make sure that the soil ph level is at 4.5 to 5.5 otherwise they'll have a tough time growing in it. Strawberries and blackberries requires a higher soil ph of 5.5 to 6.5.

Once you have determined the average chill hours in your area, choose the right cultivar family, northern highbush, southern highbush or rabbiteyes. Choose 2 different varieties that blooms around the same time. E.g. Very early season, early-mid season, mid season, mid-late season or very late season.

Misty and O'neal are 2 very early season southern highbushes in growing in Melb.

I looked at zone tolerance and overall mature height since I'm in city in raised beds and pots. You dont want something too tall or difficult for your kids to pick even if you cant prune, but there are move dwarf and semi-dwarf habit blues now than when I started out.

I started out with a couple for your zone a Burgundy low bush Z3-7 & Patriot Z3/4-8 which has low bush characteristic so doesnt get too high but great production with large berries (gave me over 4qts by itself & not finished yet) at 4ft tall. Also the burgundy is an early producer here in Z7 so should be no problem to fruit for you, small berries but concentrated flavor as if it were a dried berry. Burgundy will spread the most and some use to line driveways since its salt tolerant. I've seen estimates of 5ft up to 10-20ft and I believe it. It was 18in high & 8in wide is now contained at 20in high & 3ft wide only cause I've removed root-runners to start more, but still easy to net over cause birds love them which is another reason not to go too tall.

Sunshine blues would work too Z5-10 and will get 4-5ft tall but will probably stay a little lower to hug ground warmth. Definitely throw in a TopHat/Northsky since they are extremely cold tolerant in pots and a cheap, easy pollinator. Mine is in a 10in pot on top of tiered platform year round snow, wind and ice with no problems. After a year or so I noticed my flowering sync'ed up on all of them even though formation of fruit was at different rates. I pick late May Burgundies to end of August/Sept Sunshines. There is a repeat bloomer/fruiter called Sweetheart but I dont have much info on it yet. I'm sure the Patriots and TopHat swapped pollen this year since the berries on the Tophat are huge, almost quarter sized.

If you turn on messaging I can send "research charts" I used to decide on varieties.

Floral_uk my beds will be boxes directly on the ground.

I have moved the blueberries from raised bed to containers so I could put my blackberries and another set of strawberries in the beds.

Initially started raised bed since regular ground couldnt support blueberries here. I lost a few different trials of blues in ground till I built up soil 9-18in over ground in wooden frames. But as time went on and I saw they didnt spread as far as I thought (or did and needed to be controlled), I moved and knew blackberries could utilize better. My raspberries got wild in the raised beds and came up in neighbors yard so I had to move also.

The varieties I selected also are more tolerant of fluctuations in acidity scale and wet, humid conditions. NYC weather is crazy with ankle deep rains standing in streets this year and 100% humidity for a week last year. But the plants have soldiered on.

Ok I looked up my chill hours, temps between 45-32F . 2014-15 was 466, 15-16 was 617, and 16-17 was 650.

Total hours below 45 it in the 4-5000 range.

Im going to check more into that cause im from Mackinaw Island, Michigan which doesn't seem to be even close with some of the chill hour maps I've seen.

The generalized maps are showing well above 1000 chill hours and some of the weather stations from that site don't record chill hours so I'm still at a loss.

You only need to know general range of chill hours to pick the correct plants. If a certain variety says it needs 150-200 chill hours its probably suited for southern climes like FL. 450-750 is north, like from DC to MA. As long as the environment can provide cold with frost or snow to make go dormant for a period of time then the plant will "rest" until prolonged warmth will cause to emerge and flower.