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[Road's End Farm <organic87@frontiernet.net>]

Wild black raspberries in this area carry a virus that will gradually,  
over several years, render red raspberry and blackberry plantings  
useless. (In my experience, this is likely to include varieties sold  
as virus resistant; though this may depend on local strains of the  
virus.) Domestic black raspberries can I believe also carry it  
asymptomatically; so planting black raspberries that aren't virus  
tested and clean near the red ones can indeed cause problems.

If the virus isn't present, then I doubt there's any problem with  
planting clean red and black raspberries near each other. If it is  
present, I don't know how far it travels; though I'm fairly sure it's  
more than twenty feet.

The "old wives" are, as usual, right in some circumstances and wrong  
in others (much like old husbands.)


-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 6A now I think
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale




On May 21, 2012, at 10:20 PM, Jim Fruth wrote:

>    Horsefeathers!  Balderdash!  Baloney!  Old Wives Tale!  Etcetera!
>
>    My black raspberries are twenty feet away from the red  
> raspberries which
> are six feet away from the blackberries.  So long as I deeply till  
> between
> the varieties to prevent invasiveness, I have had no (NO) problems  
> in twenty
> plus years.  I have not seen a single interchange of diseases .  My  
> ONLY
> problem is that my next door neighbor grows wild raspberries and does
> nothing to control Cane Borer which makes extra work for me every  
> year.
>
> Jim Fruth
> Brambleberry Fruit Farm
> 4002 Davis Street
> Pequot Lakes, MN  56472