Gooseberry - What are they all about?

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I recently was inside my local Tractor Supply and I was blindsided by a display full of different plants. Being weak on willpower and with a few dollars burning a hole in my pocket, I snagged two gooseberry plants that I have brought home and planted into the ground.

I have tended wild blackberries before along with grown strawberries from time to time but this is a new world for me. I have read that the plant can be thorny but the fruit can be utilized fresh or in cooking. I'm wondering if anyone else has them and has wisdom to impart. Maybe share a jam recipe?

I also have read that they have some specific pruning requirements to ensure they don't suffer from powdery mildew. While I don't mind pruning up a plant, do people have experience with just letting it go?

I love gooseberries but I'm still getting the hang of growing them. When we first moved here around ten years ago, we bought a dozen plants, about three different varieties. We planted them all over the place and the one that grew the fastest, healthiest and fruited soonest was the one planted on the sweet spot on the west facing treeline. Too far into the trees and they didn't fruit. The ones with full sun have are growing soooooo slowly and only fruited for the first time last summer. The one on the tree line is at least five times bigger and has been producing fruit for many years now.

My childhood friend had gooseberries which is the only place I ever ate them before growing my own. Hers were also near a tree line, though on the southwest side if my memory is correct. (Both evergreen tree forests, hers were cedars, mine are Douglas firs.)

I haven't had a single issue with powdery mildew though that could be my climate or it could be the varieties. I don't really prune them, haven't needed to yet since the majority were too small.

My biggest one is still only a small bush about 2' tall; the branches are more than double that since they go up and then arch back to the ground. I should look into what benefits pruning might give. I've been leaving that one alone because the tips have been rooting where they touch the ground and I would like it to keep spreading since it's in such an ideal spot.

I also have a josta berry, which is a cross between a currant and a gooseberry. That thing is HUGE- the branches arch up higher than 5' and then fall back to the ground. It gets loaded with fruit and I've had no disease or pest issues. It is also growing in full sun in poor soil that used to be gravel right next to the gravel road. It does get good drainage because of that gravel I think.

I think some varieties of gooseberries have better mildew resistance than others. I expect it's most likely they have been selling a modern variety with some resistance. Mine is Invicta:

my gooseberry thriving on neglect!

It has big sweet berries when very ripe, but you can use the thinnings for jam just as well. Easy to propagate from cuttings here - just stick them in the ground in autumn and bam! a new plant. If your climate doesn't favour that, then I find that they also layer quite well too. Sometimes inadvertently, since the bushes can get a bit sprawling if not pruned, and I quite often forget, which doesn't seem to do any harm. I think of the pruning as like for a miniature apple tree, and just open out any congested branches and trim back any overlong ones and that seems to work.
I've made Jams, chutney, cordial (that was rather yummy!) crumbles, and also just eat them neat when ripe! Mine are in a pretty shaded spot, so I don't think they will like much heat as Jenny said. But having them in different locations here also staggers the harvest as the ones with more sun ripen first.

The gooseberries I tried to grow in Seattle were ravaged by a worm - currant sawfly or something like that.  Wasps would come and clean them out, but they'd let them come back, it was kind of a worm ranch for the wasps and the worms ate up the leaves real fast, so they weren't a very effective control.  Keep an eye out for them, maybe you can nip an infestation in the bud.

Donn Cave wrote:The gooseberries I tried to grow in Seattle were ravaged by a worm - currant sawfly or something like that.  Wasps would come and clean them out, but they'd let them come back, it was kind of a worm ranch for the wasps and the worms ate up the leaves real fast, so they weren't a very effective control.  Keep an eye out for them, maybe you can nip an infestation in the bud.

Yikes! You've got me worried now that I've just been lucky so far. 🤞

We have gooseberry sawfly in the UK.

sawfly

source
Apparently there are a few different flies that target gooseberry bushes. The damage looks pretty bad - they can strip a bush before you know it, but apparently it doesn't do the bushes much harm in the long run. I generally leave them for the birds, some years are worse than others.

For years I was bedeviled by a wickedly needled plant all through everywhere my wild black raspberries are ~ little corner woods, edges,
basically around the edges of the entire place. It’s thorns easily pierce my jeans while picking the black raspberries. I simply didn’t know what they were.
It wasn’t until I spent a year on my friend’s organic market garden and berry farm that I realized the plant I hated was wild gooseberry.

Now, while harvesting my black raspberries (and is a stupendous year for my wild black raspberries!), I keep an eye on the fruiting progress of my wild gooseberries. Right now, they are mostly green, so probably ought to be ready by the time the other berries are done.

They must be a natural companion for the black radpberries, because they grow together everywhere. And seem to dig the woodchip mulch I use around the brambles. The other comments are true for me as well ~ they seem to like the part sun/part shade of the edges best.

If any of you have experience with the wild varieties of gooseberries, maybe you can answer this: do they have male and female plants? Only roughly half of mine bear fruit.

Or is it just the age of the bush?

I hope you all are enjoying this berry bonanza we are.

Far northern Illinois, zone 5 or 6 here.

Most of the wild ones I've tried are nasty. I have black velvet and poor man currently and used to have a hinnonmaki at my old house. Bv is probably the most vigorous and productive, decent fruit kind of like tart concord grapes. Hinnonmaki was less tart from what I remember, poorman is the sweetest barely tart at all when ripe and kind of has a funky cotton candy berry flavor but it's probably been my least productive. It's also often described as low thorn and mine has tons so I question if it's the correct variety.

Unfortunately my two transplants both failed to thrive. I put them in a semi-shade spot that was more on the clay side and perhaps that wasn't the best choice.

Any suggestion on the best spots for gooseberries?

Timothy Norton wrote:Unfortunately my two transplants both failed to thrive. I put them in a semi-shade spot that was more on the clay side and perhaps that wasn't the best choice.

Any suggestion on the best spots for gooseberries?

My newest gooseberry transplants that I rooted last year are doing extremely well in a loose clay soil that I dumped composted cow manure on top. The top is pretty loose due to the 100's of buttercups I pulled up before I planted the gooseberries but it's heavy clay a few inches down. They only get sun until about noon and have a lot of strawberries mulching the ground around them. It's a well draining spot, having the tiniest slope downhill from them.

I think they like dirt that is heavily mulched with organic matter, like a forest floor. My full sun gooseberries are doing much better ever since I mulched them with wood chips and my black currant plant in the same area started sending out underground runners that are popping up all over the place. I'm glad they are doing that because Bambi 😡 has decided she likes to eat the tops of the main bush.

Also, I'm in the PNW so my soil is acidic and the gooseberries enjoy it as much as the blueberries do. We don't have summer rain and I'm watering once a week or less.

Hope some of that helps a little. 🤷

We planted four currants at the bottom of our orchard, watered by just the subirrigation, almost full sand, lots of shade from weeds and small fruit trees. Three have not fruited in four years and are still very small. One was weed-whacked so I'm not blaming it, but the other two... The fourth is a black currant and fruited so well this year. It is about 2' high and sprawls about 5' in a bunch of long branches going every which way. I got enough to make one cup of jelly in the first picking, and may get another cup later this week. Very tasty.

A friend of ours on similar land nearby has a black currant that is very old planted at the door of her greenhouse. She cut it back hard twice and it came right back so she is leaving it. It makes so much fruit, like there is probably 5 gallons on that thing, more berry than leaf, branches groaning under the weight. It's about 5' in all directions, maybe slightly more like 6' wide. I'm going to ask for a cutting this fall. Thank you for the tip about rooting them being easy, if it applies to currants as well as gooseberries, Nancy.

Another thing to note is that in addition to powdery mildew they also harbor blister rust which kills white pines. We have close to 100% infection rate here, but no wild currants, so I don't think it matters. Pacific ninebarks and other natives also harbor blister rust.

Once I got to have gooseberry pie as a kid, probably high school aged?  I liked it.  My stepgrandfather loved them, he grew up eating the pie in summertime.