Red Raspberry Producer

I'm Tim Brown, Brownvalley Farms, in Littlestown Pennsylvania. We are primarily a berry farm. We have strawberries, we grow some strawberries in a high tunnel, we have a couple of acres of strawberries in the field. We grow black and red raspberries and blueberries.

What are the benefits of red raspberries to your operation? There are two ways to grow red raspberries.You can grow them on primocanes or floricanes. We use primocanes to make them come later in the season and that gives us season extension.

I really don't want the red raspberries while we are dealing with black raspberries.

What are the challenges of red raspberries?

One of the biggest challenges in the last couple of years is the spotted wing drosophila that is pretty hard to control and they're pretty hard to even see but they do damage the fruit.

What is your marketing plan for red raspberries?

We sell some of them here as retail we have some other markets that buy on a wholesale basis.

What other marketing opportunities are available for red raspberries? The closer to the bigger cities you get the the more demand there is for red raspberries.

In our particular area here people like the black raspberries better, when you get way from south-central Pennsylvania they all want the red raspberries. Is there anything else you want to tell the viewers about red raspberries?

They are pretty easy to grow. We just use a simple trellis system with a T cross and baler twine to hold the canes up.For black raspberries we have a more sophisticated trellis system on those. Thank you.