We are trying to make blackberry wine this year for the first time. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Mona --- I'll be curious to hear how your blackberry wine turns out. Maybe that's how wineberries got their name, even though they're raspberries, not blackberries.

Hi--I think I read somewhere that tomtoes get blight sometimes around raspberries. Not sure where I read this! Maybe you can google and see. I got the impression that, like walnuts, raspberries have something not good for tomatoes. Of course, wineberries may be only a distant cousin of raspberries. As for your patch--maybe you can save a few roots to put near the creek, where they won't be too flooded, or to put somewhere along the alligator swamp, just so you don't lose them!

Mom --- I'd read something about tomato and raspberry diseases hopping around, but I never figured out what they were talking about until now. The two are in completely different families, and tomato blights only affect potatoes and tomatoes (not even peppers, which are much more closely related than raspberries are).

A quick search of the internet suggests that the diseases all go in the other direction --- raspberries can come down with tomato ringspot. I can't seem to find any information about tomatoes actually getting sick from ringspot, although raspberries do, so I guess you don't want to plant raspberries after tomatoes to protect the raspberries.

We dug our wineberries out of the wild, and there are plenty of wild patches, so no worries about losing them.

We have wineberries running up our tree line. This year I was able to harvest about 1/2 gallon of them. My favorite use is to freeze them and snack on them frozen.

If you are looking for a good raspberry to put in there, the Anne variety are delicious. They are one of the "white" varieties. I only put in one this year, but they are so good that I'm expanding their domain next year.

Fritz --- We may have to try some Anne raspberries. We've been growing Caroline ever-bearing red raspberries, which are extremely productive although the flavor isn't quite as top-notch as wineberries. Also Bristol black raspberries, but I don't feel like they taste as good and are as large and productive as this awesome path we used to harvest from in my childhood --- I may have to go dig some of those plants up and bring them home.