Grow soft fruitGooseberries

Ripe gooseberries taste great straight from the bush

Gooseberries are so called as they were used to make a sharp sauce to accompany roast goose. They’re the first soft fruit to be ready for use – often by mid-May.

Although rarely seen fresh in the shops they’re fabulous for pies and puddings, and when fully ripe provide a sweet treat straight from the bush. Gooseberry bushes are tough and long lived, and the only drawback is the thorns.

Best varieties

• ‘Greenfinch’
• ‘Invicta’
• Red-berried ‘Pax’ or ‘Rokula’

Getting started

Buy two- or three-year-old bushes. You should get about 4kg of berries per plant after a couple of years. Plants trained as lollipop standards are decorative and the fruit is easy to pick. 

Position in a sunny, sheltered spot. Gooseberries are, however, pretty tolerant of different growing conditions.

Plant so each bush has at least 1.2sq m of ground. Cut back all the main branches by half and remove any within 20cm of the ground to create a short trunk or leg.

Care

Thin the fruit when the berries are semi-ripe

Feed in spring with sulphate of potash applied at 70g per sq m, then mulch the surface with bulky organic matter.

Water in dry spells, especially when the fruit starts to swell.

Thin the fruit when the berries are semi-ripe, from mid-May to early June. Pick every other berry, and use them for cooking. The remaining berries will get bigger and can be left to get fully ripe for eating fresh in the middle of July.

Prune in the first winter after planting by removing any branches that are too low, or crossing the centre of the bush. Cut back the others by half to create a goblet-shaped bush with an open centre and six to eight main branches.

Cut all the short side-shoots back to two buds. Next summer lots of new side-shoots will appear. Cut these back by two-thirds or so, to allow light and air into the developing fruit. In winter, cut these shortened shoots back to two buds, and repeat this cycle each year.

Renovating

Restore old bushes by pruning in winter. If they’re healthy and cropping well, they’re well worth saving. Gooseberries can be very long lived, and you may have inherited some interesting varieties.

First remove any shoots that are dead, broken, weak, diseased or damaged. Then thin out the branches to open up the centre of the plant to let in air and light.