Gooseberries in the garden and kitchen

I am interested to hear people's feelings about gooseberries.  Do you like them, and what are your earliest memories?  When did you last enjoy them?

These days gooseberries rarely make an appearance in greengrocers or on the shelves of supermarkets, have gooseberries fallen out of favour?

Last year Susanna  and I posted a small gooseberry harvest on Facebook, and again this year I have shown my first harvest from my one and only Gooseberry Bush Invicta.  Up in Warwickshire the harvest has not yet started in her garden. Susanna may of course have a later fruiting variety.

Already the first pickings are more than the whole of  last year's crop, and together with a second picking, added to the above, I have 1 Kg prepared fruit.  There are still at least a couple of pickings left.  I shall wait until the rest are fully ripe to check on their sweetness.

Cooked in a little water and orange juice with the zest, I have a little stash of jam to enjoy in the Winter months.  I could not help thinking of my mother as I prepared the fruit yesterday, as it would have been her birthday.

Harvesting means scratches if you don't wear gloves, but once the branches are moved and the fruit is visible picking, with the bowl on the ground, is pretty straight forward. For now the birds are leaving them alone which I am happy with. I have tried netting over some strawberries a couple of years ago, but because I had not pegged it down sufficiently, a little bird got in and got trapped, so now I do not net any fruit.  Of course, if you have a large garden a lovely walk in fruit cage would be the answer.

On 17th June, I picked the remaining gooseberries, a further 550g, bringing the total harvest to a rounded 1.5Kg for the one bush Invicta in 2020.  More or less the largest berry is 13g.  I'm not about to join the wonderful champion gooseberry growers of Cheshire, whose Giant Gooseberries are over 60g!

I picked up this bush at a local nursery, and planted it a corner of the garden now called: Gooseberry Corner.  What attracted me to this cultivar is its ability to resist Mildew.  Invicta is an early season variety and In its second year in the garden the yields are higher than expected.  There are some very good comments on different gooseberry varieties on the site Garden Focused.  Blackcurrants are doing very poorly in this area as they need so many chill days, and over the winter, we hardly had any frosty periods.  I may well be adding gooseberry Hinnonmaki Red. Plenty of good growing guides, with the one on Grow Veg clear and simple.

I've loved gooseberries as far back as I can remember.   Once we had been invited out to 'luncheon' at a lovely large country home.  I must have been eight or nine years old, and we had all travelled to the UK.  We travelled from London, by steam train where the water intake was between the lines, and met at the station the other end and driven to this house with an enchanting garden.  Can you imagine just how excited I was?  My father knowing his little greedy gourmet, had instructed me to be on my best behaviour, which I now know, means that I ought to be quiet and not talk too much.  When the desserts were presented at the end of the meal there were two options.  I remember one of them being a Gooseberry Pie.  I just could not resist and my words were:  "Please may I have the both?"  I could not understand why the whole party erupted into laughter, after all I did ask very politely!

My mother too had a particular love of gooseberries. Once when she was visiting I found her walking back from the fruit and vegetable section of my then garden which was planted out with a great range of fruit.  She has a look on her like a cat who had got the cream.  When I asked what she had been up to, she confessed that each morning she would walk down the garden and eat the fruit off the bushes.  I was slightly bemused and asked her which fruit and she replied: Gooseberries!  I had always just cooked the fruit and had not realised just how sweet and delicious a well ripened gooseberry could be.  At the time the Whinham's Industry were as purple as dark plums, and Golden Drops soft, sweet and delicious, reminiscent of a muscat grape.  Just proves you are never too old to learn something from your mother!  Each time we travelled out to visit my mother, amongst the must haves from the UK, were tins of gooseberries.  I guess they reminded her of  home.