Which gooseberry plant

Zero mildew on all plants. If you can live with the thorns the red one is a must for the home garden orchard. A quick search on the internet yielded no results. Often people assume that RHS AGM is up to date but our research indicates that often they can be 10 or even 20 years out of date.

I don't know if this is the case for gooseberries but it may well be. Has any one else any experiences of this? This year it has set wonderfully again and is a big plant of a metre high by a metre and a high wide. The birds always leave it alone. No plant we've had has ever matched this fruit production in a relatively small sized plant. Highly complex subject, but not a major issue for gooseberry growers in the UK.

There is a problem due to warmer winters for growers of traditional blackcurrants which are very high chill hours and may not get enough chill in Southern areas of England. For that reason new cultivars are being developed. It all depends on the model used to measure chill e. It is better to think of it as vernalization when the plant needs temps of between 5 degrees and 10 degrees Celsius to go dormant then get enough chill to achieve initiation of the flowering process after bud break in Spring.

It is a very inaccurate science and subject to many problems in determining accuracy. Gooseberries need a minimum of hours depending on the cultivar or maybe a hours or even hours. No general agreement there! Generally the later flowering the cultivar the higher the chill need. Good resource below to explain the science better. Hope that helps! What are these chilling hours plant nurseries talk of and how many do gooseberries actually need?

First I've heard of this term so I'm intrigued. Contrary to popular belief gooseberry is not an easy plant to grow in the context that you can neglect and still get a lot of fruit- not quite true! You must feed and prune. The result is very rewarding! I did replenish the soil recently with chicken pellets and liberal doses of bone fish blood meal, so that could be the reason they are all flowering profusely with small gooseberries forming.

I have a Jostaberry which after 5 years flowers erratically and gives low crops. I will replace it with something later. I was given 20 years ago a hybrid cross of Hinnonmaki Green with an older unknown type perhaps wild. It suckers from the roots, flowers early, is very vigorous, has good mildew resistance, not bothered by aphids or sawflies much and gives good yields of very large white yellow fruit which get big and explode, if left on the bush ripening too long.

The gooseberry is indeed a fascinating plant to grow and incredibly adaptive to changing climates unlike blackcurrants which apart from Jostaberry I never had any luck with- reversion, virus etc. Even now at time of writing I can see small flower buds forming on its small leaves. This plant is not phased by frosts whatsoever. Responds well to pruning as it is very upright and it suckers freely from the base so plenty of cuttings to take. They root easily.

Watch out for its thorns though-they are vicious. My wife's Hinnonmaki Yellow plant had a similar yield of about 1. Its growth pattern reminds us of a strawberry with runners, which is unlike the traditional single bare leg growth pattern of gooseberry perse.

This spreading cultivar can root easily when long vigorous shoots bury under the soil line. The fruit is really sweet, like a sweet grape, but its thorns are razor sharp needles making pruning a bit of a chore, but still worth growing for its quality fruit. Also it does resist mildew most years. They will bear fruit for two years or so after that but the amount of fruit will decline. If the tips of the lower stems are bent down to the ground they will probably take root but that's as spreading as they go.

The same goes for all varieties of gooseberries as far as I am aware. Realistically expect yields in the UK to be a good 3 to 5 pounds by the 4th year.

I've have had mine for over 10 years. Big yields only started in the 7th year. Beware of poorly sourced cheap gooseberry plants as sometimes cultivars get mixed up. I can then update the main article regarding parentage. My Captivator plant is over 6 feet wide and as big, it can produce 2 to 4 kg in ideal conditions after its establishment.

These yields only come when it has been established for 3 to 5 years. Great plant if you get the soil and conditions right in your garden. Hardy to o Celsius and grows well in zones 2 to 9. We use cookies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audience is coming from. By clicking OK or continuing to use this site you agree to our privacy policy and our use of cookies.

Adjust all dates to your locality UK, Ireland, France. Click here. This site uses cookies. Learn more. There are several key differences between gooseberry bush varieties and they can be summed up as follows: When they crop - early, mid or late season, Are they suitable for cooking, eating raw or both Colour, both green and red are widely grown in the UK Disease resistance.

When pinkish they are excellent for cooking and when Click here for the full in depth article. Combine this with the fact that Invicta is a very strong bush which produces a large crop of fruit reliably each year and it is clear why this variety is so popular. PAX Pax was first released to the market in so it is a relative newcomer in the gooseberry world. It is a cross between Whinham's Industry and another unnamed variety. One of the key advantages of this variety is that it produces almost no spines - a great advantage when picking the fruit.

Individual fruits are a deep red, of average size 7g per fruit and ripen mid season in early June. They are sweet enough to be eaten off the bush but also cook well. You can expect a crop of about 1. Disease resistance is good, pruning to an open centre greatly aids ventilation and reduces the chances of mould, mildew etc. The red fruits are attractive and have fewer "hairs" on the compared to many others making them easier to eat straight from the bush.

Individual berries are about 10g when ripe making them on the large side of average. Excellent for eating straight from the bush and also for cooking. The plants do have lots of thorns but they are upright and strong growers.

The Hinnonmaki group is on the lower end of this chill need and is successful because it is highly self fertile and adaptable to extremely cold and warmer climates. Pax is subject to winter dieback and is not hardy.

Lady Sun a very vigorous hybrid has few thorns but is low yielding as its delicate flowers mainly on 3rd year shoots as this plant can be prone to run off- dropping off in winds or rain.

In 40 years of growing them, I've only seen underground shoots in the cultivar Hinnonmaki Green and a few wilder forms. Modern types like Hinnonmaki Red and Invicta don't. This gooseberry during establishment loses more of those bigger thorns, but people are correct it is not thornless or soft thorns like descriptions out there say. But I reckon other types are thrown in the mix and misold as Xenia. Even respected nurseries can get bad stock time to time. The fruits I picked last year were sweet and a little bigger than Hinno Red, but the plant is very thorny.

I thought they would lessen as it established more in the last 3 years, but not the case. For such a small plant it is heavy cropping and sweet tasting. I weighed the fruits which were all around 3.

I picked a similar volume of fruits from my allotment gooseberry Careless and they came in at 2. The Xenia was poor again, very thorny advertised as having afew soft thorns! All my gooseberries bar one!

Only squashing keeps them under control, but next day they resurface. Put a sheet around your bush and lightly shake the bush. They will drop off onto it and then easier to spot and kill, because they will crawl back up the plant stem, if you miss even one. This year it has been very prolific with masses of fruit. For the first time it has not been attacked by the sawfly. Has anyone else have similar experience? It's ideal for container growing, vigorous, fruits are mostly large and a very sweet yellow green.

Sawfly attacks it, but the leaves prove tough for it, so the plant is not decimated within days like others I've seen, so you get to squash the critters!

Mildew is extremely rare, but usually limited to the odd leaf or slight mould on a fruit or two. Hinno Yellow likes any soil type. Pruned the middle out of Invicta last year and sprayed twice with fungicide myclobutanil at flowering time but it's still got AM this year but not as bad.

I grow 5 types, in order of superiority and observations: 1. Date: 17 April From: A. The leaves are mildew prone and the whole plant generally of low vigor.

Most of these newer cultivars described as being semi thornless or of weak thorn habit are widely promoted as being the best available for the home gardener.

They are most certainly NOT! It is unlikely you don't have a true type plant, but it can happen. When grown in light soil any gooseberry will give you a lot of growth as roots spread more easily at the expense of fruit size as they exhaust the soil more quickly. That is why it is best to plant in heavier soils as the added locked in moisture aids fruit size in drought conditions and make for a much stronger root system as well as a balanced leaf growth ratio.

Plus adding something like chicken pellets as a slow release around its base helps tremendously. How big are the fruits on your plants in July? Mine plant only seems to produce very small fruits year after year, yet I see pictures of this variety with large fruits all over the Internet and database link review of Captivator on this site cites 4.

My plant is sourced true to type. Beginning to wonder if I have the right plant. The best are the Hinnonmakis for yield and disease resistance. That's why they are commercially grown and sold everywhere! Also you get an advantage with this Hinnonmaki group in that they produce flowers usually within a year of planting unlike others which may take some years to get established.

Date: 28 March From: T. It is vigorous grower with beautifully flavoured orange-red fruit which is very large. Its mildew resistance is fairly high. It crops very well early July. Date: 16 March From: T. The thorns are thin like fragile needles, no way like Invicta's.

Yellow crops very well ripe mid July and fruits can either be medium to large g and is resistant to disease or root rot and sawfly attacks are not persistent. Cuttings roots strike easily. Only surpassed by Hinnonmaki Red cropping ability.

Wonderful plants! They also look attractive in the landscape alongside blueberries! Date: 22 October From: J. The Red- 1. Both the Yellow and the Red types are highly adaptable to any conditions and mildew resistant.

The Green is lesser so and prone to wet, plus new shoots sometimes rot. Its large fruits are better suited for cooking purposes, while the other two produce medium to large sweet fruits with little problems in pollination or run off after heavy rain. It doesn't grow like a gooseberry and it's very hard to keep an open centre to avoid sawfly etc.

I've never had an incidence of mildew yet RHS lists this one as being so so resistant. Very pleasing plant to grow and strikes cuttings easily. The reviews for it e. I've even read descriptions of large to very large fruit. Hype again. The fruit was small every season and at best medium sized in a light crop, but always delicious as most gooseberries are when fully ripe. Mine has just always been a bit pathetic compared to the red. Use prunings taken from young plants.

Gooseberries can be grown as bushes or trained into various space-saving or ornamental shapes. These include upright cordons and fans grown against a support, such as a wall or fence. Cordons, in particular, can be planted closer together, allowing you to grow several different varieties in a small space.

Gooseberries often fruit prolifically once well established, and trained varieties make attractive additions to any garden. Gooseberries can be bought as bare-root plants without any soil around the roots or in containers.

Bare-root plants are only available while they are dormant, from late autumn to early spring, usually by mail order from fruit nurseries.

Potted plants are available for most of the year and are widely sold in garden centres as well as by online retailers. Cordons should have a good spreading root system. There is a wide choice of varieties, with red, green or yellow fruits, that ripen from mid- to late summer. Some are more vigorous than others or offer better mildew resistance.

Dessert varieties are sweet and delicious eaten raw, while culinary varieties are for cooking, to make into puddings, pies and jams. Gooseberries tolerate a wide range of soil conditions, but prefer moist, well-drained soil. They crop best and produce sweeter fruits in a sunny position, but will tolerate light shade. They can be planted in the ground or in large containers of soil-based compost. Plant bare-root gooseberries between late autumn and early spring, and container-grown plants at any time, avoiding waterlogged, parched or frozen soil.

See our advice on planting trees and shrubs for soil preparation and planting techniques. Cordon plants need support, which should be put in place before or at planting time. This is usually a system of horizontal wires, spaced 60cm 2ft and 1. Also insert a 1. Several pests can affect gooseberries, including aphids , capsid bug , woolly vine or currant scale and gooseberry sawfly.

The fruit fly spotted wing drosophila SWD is likely to become an increasing problem. Use netting to prevent bullfinches damaging the buds in winter and to protect ripening fruit from birds in summer. Also keep watch for diseases such as American gooseberry mildew , grey mould Botrytis and coral spot. Protect from late frost at flowering time by covering plants at night with horticultural fleece. This mildew causes a powdery grey and white fungus on leaves and stems.

The mildew may also appear on fruit, causing problems with ripening. Cut out any infected stems or leaves you see straight away and destroy. This mildew is worse if bushes are planted close together giving poor air circulation, so space bushes out when planting. Pale green, caterpillar-like larvae cause rapid and severe defoliation of plants, often reducing bushes to bare stems by harvest time. Damage starts in mid to late spring, but there can be three generations of the pest a year, so problems can continue through the summer.

You should avoid using pesticides if possible, because these can destroy beneficial insects as well as aphids. Learn more about protecting your crops from aphids here. While this insect is a bigger problem for currant plants, it can harm gooseberries, too. Look for the adults, called currant clearwing moths Synanthedon tipuliformis. They lay eggs in late spring, and their larvae emerge shortly after to chew their way into the canes of the plant.

Shoots may die, or they may emerge late the following year and be stunted. If you suspect you have this pest, snip an injured shoot. Pruning is your best defense against this pest.

If you have them, cut your entire plant back by a foot. As you do your yearly pruning, remove and destroy any canes that you find that have dark holes in them. Currant fruit flies Euphranta canadensis are small flying insects that are about a third of an inch long eight millimeters and are beige, yellow, or orange.

They lay their eggs on the berries of currant and gooseberry bushes and the larvae bore into the fruit and eat it from the inside out. If you examine your fruit and find maggots that look like grains of white rice buried in the middle of your berries, then E. After the affected berries fall to the ground, the larvae pupate and overwinter in the debris under the plant.

Control methods include removal of the fallen berries and the leaves in which they hide. You can also use floating row covers before the adult flies become a threat. Organic pesticides such as pyrethrin work well against the adults — but will not reach the maggots buried in the fruit. Chemical insecticides have the same limitation. Read more about how to identify and control the currant fruit fly here. These worms are the larvae of the gooseberry moth Zophodia grossulariella.

They cause fruits to become hollowed out and discolored, and the fruits will fall off the plant prematurely. The adults are mottled gray and brown with an inch-wide wingspan.

Reapply after 12 days. Read more about using Bt in the garden here. They are caterpillar-like worms, with a greenish-yellow body and black spots, between six and 12 millimeters long that feed on the leaves. Large enough populations can defoliate an entire plant. The first batch of these pests usually appears in mid- to late spring, and there can be two generations after that, so you need to keep an eye out all summer long. The adults have shiny black bodies and brownish-yellow legs.

The good news is, since the grubs only tunnel down about six inches, you can snip eight inches off the tip of each shoot to get rid of them. It causes brown spots on the leaves, stems, and berries, starting in early summer.

The disease lives on fallen leaves throughout the winter, so be sure to clean up any plant debris that has dropped around the base of plants in the fall. Keep plants well watered to help them survive the summer and reduce leaf drop.

Choose resistant varieties if you know this disease is common in your area. Both American and European varieties can contract it, but R. This fungus looks like a white, powdery coating on the leaves, branches, and berries that eventually turns brown. It causes plants to be stunted and can kill new growth or cause berries to be small or cracked.

Cut off any parts of the plant that are infected, and ensure you are giving your plant plenty of air circulation with regular pruning. Water at the base of plants, and do so in the morning so that leaves can dry out during the day if they get wet.

This disease spreads by spending part of the year on currants or gooseberry plants, and part of the year on five-needle pine trees. Keep gooseberries at least 1, feet away from any valuable pine trees, and do not plant in locations where they are forbidden. One plant can give you up to four quarts of berries a year. Depending on your location, harvest time usually begins any time from July to September.

Picking about half of the under-ripe fruits has the added benefit of allowing the remaining berries to get larger and sweeter than they may have otherwise. They can be light green, pink, purple, red, or yellow when ripe. Be careful as you pluck them, since extremely ripe berries can burst in your hands. You can also lay a tarp under the bush and gently shake and knock the ripe berries loose. And remember to wear gloves, to avoid being snagged by thorns!

Put the berries in a shallow container rather than a deep bucket, or use small containers, because gooseberries can get crushed by the weight of the other berries. Read our full guide on harvesting gooseberries here. Gooseberries keep in the refrigerator for up to two weeks in a container.

Pick off the little dried flower that sometimes sticks around on the blossom end of berries before eating. You should also snip off any stem portions that comes off when you pick the berry. To extend your harvest, freeze the berries. Wash them and place them on a tray in a single layer. Freeze them and then place the frozen fruit in a sealed bag or container to keep in the freezer for up to two years.

Pickled gooseberries are a treat. Allow the sugar mixture to cool before pouring it over the gooseberries. Seal the jars and store in the fridge. After a month, the pickle is ready to use. You can learn about making jams and jellies on our sister site, Foodal. Gooseberries are high in fiber and have a flavor that is sometimes compared to rhubarb , with less bitterness.

However, some varieties are more sugary than others, and some are downright sweet when ripe. But I like to get creative. Because they have a bit of tartness to them, they make a nice addition to savory dishes. Every summer when the gooseberries are ready, I like to combine them with a little bourbon and diced cucumber to top grilled lobster or crab. You can also use them in meat pies, in tarts, as an accompaniment to cheese, in fruit salad, muddled in cocktails, chopped and baked on salmon, or as a sauce for a holiday goose or turkey.

I remember the first time I bit into a ripe berry and felt it burst in my mouth — it was a revelation. With more gardeners growing these plants, more people will be able to experience all that gooseberries have to offer! Let me know if you run into any issues and what varieties you decide to grow in your space. While you wait for your gooseberry harvest to ripen, check out these other berry plants that you can grow at home:.

See our TOS for more details. Uncredited photos: Shutterstock. Kristine Lofgren is a writer, photographer, reader, and gardening lover from outside Portland, Oregon.

She was raised in the Utah desert, and made her way to the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two dogs in Her passion is focused these days on growing ornamental edibles, and foraging for food in the urban and suburban landscape. Okay Okay! Thank you so much for this article. We are going to be planting 3 or 4 varieties in both Missouri and Idaho this year.