Here is a blog post on how to grow and harvest gooseberry. Gooseberry is native the woodlands here in the UK so they are very easy to grow and don’t need much care. However, they are not much seen for n supermarket shelves. Personally, I have not seen them at all on supermarket shelves.
I have a few berries growing in my garden and gooseberry is one of them. Now it’s harvest time so I thought I just write a blog post on the gooseberry.
Gooseberry plant is full of thorns so do mind where you decide to plant permanently.
Growing gooseberry
To grow gooseberry just buy young plants from garden centres. Available from March onwards. It will take a year to establish the plant before it begins to fruit. It is possible to plant it in a pot. It will grow well in a sunny spot with some well-drained manure compost.
During the first year and two do not prune let the plant establish itself (roots and branches). After that do prune the plant come autumn.
My plant is into year three and I have yet to prune it so far. It is still fruiting. However pruning does encourage fruiting as it produces more branches as a result. Some website advice to prune down to current season back to five leaves. This to be done sometime in mid-June to July.
Gooseberry don’t need much watering they can go without the need of watering. Except during drought or dry spells every 14 days. Except more frequent in container grown ones.
Gooseberry mildew is where powdery grey appear on it’s leaves prune then when if they appear. Left unattended they can cause problems in fruiting latter.
Harvesting
Depending on the variety, mine (to be honest I can’t quite remember what variety it is) fruits around June. When they turn green and light green they are ready to harvest. As the fruit mature it will also go bigger. During the fruit time it’s a good time to feed them with some comfrey or tomato feed. Fruiting does uses a lot of the plant energy. Don’t harvest them when they are too young as the gooseberry can have a tart taste in them. If they are left to ripen further to reddish brownish colour it will taste less of a tart taste in the fruit.
Birds love gooseberry so do protect if they cause probelms from bird trying to eat them. Have a look at my other post while you are here. There is elderberry on growing them from cuttings and plenty more.
