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["Lon J. Rombough" <lonrom@hevanet.com>]

One hitch.  The birds WILL spread seed, which may stay in the soil for years until the right conditions come along.  Then seedlings come up like grass.  And not just in your yard.  I once burned the berries off a hillside and within days the seedlings were literally as thick as grass.  That's one reason they are such a horrendous pest in the NW.
-Lon Rombough
http://www.bunchgrapes.com  

http://cookingupastory.com/index.php/2008/04/18/the-grape-grower/
For all other things grape,   http://www.vitisearch.com


On Apr 21, 2008, at 2:55 PM, Spidra Webster wrote:

As Lon said, it's a "wildly successful" plant.  Most people here hate it because of how hard it is to remove. Still, of all the weeds there are around, I'd rather have Himalaya blackberrry than sow thistle, field bindweed, Oxalis pes-caprae and other things we have.  I like the taste of the berries very much.  In fact, I like them better than the blackberries I can get at the store.  I haven't yet grown cultivars in my backyard so I have nothing equally fresh to compare them to.  The seed size doesn't bother me at all. In face, I kind of like the roughage.  They make great pies and cobblers.

I can relatively easily find wild stands of it so there's no point to growing it myself. However, if I were to try it, I would make sure I grew it in a container.  Not a raised bed but an actual container.  And maybe grow it in the middle of a cement patio or something so that I'd have a little time to discover it before it got anywhere near tip-rooting.