Topic: Fruitbushes gooseberries a problem for me,not others though.

[Jeannine]

 I am seriously thinking of discarding by gooseberry bushes this year. I palnted my soft fruit area 3 years ago with 2 year old plants. My blackcurrants,redcurrants,are just fine and loaded. My rasps are great and my blueberries ( in different soil)  are loaded, but I can't get gooseberries. I have Pax and Invicta, 5 plants of each, the plants are healthy but grow very little fruit .  Do the birds or other critters pinch the blossom or something I don't know about? I know the birds love my blueberries so we now have them at home in very large pots, but the birds don't seem to take the currants?  I am not very familiar with gooseberries,  more of a blueberry person so what am I doing wrong. I dp prune according to a good book. Help XX Jeannine

[Simon05]

pigeons could be taking the gooseberries, I had one bush totally striped of fruit, I suppose sparrows or other birds could be taking the flowers.

[machman5]

I have had the same problem as you Jeannine!  this will the 3rd summer for mine and so far, no fruit.
The year before last, I went to the lottie one day to find the entire 2 bushes totally bare!  No leaves, fruit anything, just twigs.  I know they were o.k the day before because I spent ages weedin' around them! >:(
So, last year, I spent ages inspecting them regularly and apart from a few little green things, I found nothing. 
I have since been told there is something that likes Gooseberries and it is 'a little green thing with a black dot at one end'!
I will be watching this thread with interest  :-\

[manicscousers]

gooseberry sawfly?..little caterpillary things that can strip the plant bare..we've not had too much of a problem( keeping everything crossed as I've said this)..shake them off and squash them  ;D

[Hippychick]

I'll be watching this thread too.  I've inherited 2 extreemely old gooseberry bushes that didn't produce so well last year, so have invested in a couple of new ones, pax being one of them.  I had already half decided to keep the old ones in got a couple more years to tide the larder over, but now I'll definitely keep them in for a while.

Does anyone know how long goseberries will fruit for?  The chap that had the plot before us had it for 52 years so heaven knows how old these bushes are! :)

[Jeannine]

Well maybe I will hang on for this year and use a microscope. XX Jeannine

[Robert_Brenchley]

Gooseberry bushes will go on for decades, but I think they do run out of steam eventually. I have some old bushes I've been trying to rejuvenate, and I've discovered it's a lot faster and easier to take cuttings.

[jennym]

Jeannine - You might try putting some rotted horse manure around them about now, this will stimulate shoot growth. Then don't prune. Next year the new shoots produced this year will have matured, and should have fruiting buds, so hopefully you'll get a crop in 2009. Then when pruning, after fruiting, only cut about 2" from the tips of any new shoots - it can be easy to trim off fruiting buds and then you only get leaf.
Machman5 - definitely sounds like you get attacks of gooseberry sawfly. I start to inspect my bushes daily from mid April, as these pests can and do strip a bush of leaves so quickly, literally within one or two days. I rub them off (squish them) as soon as I see one or two, it does the trick but you have to do it every day to stop them having an effect. The eggs tend to be in sheltered places on the bush, so if you can squish them they won't hatch. The other thing is to lightly rake around the bushes about now, disturbing the soil. They live around the base in the winter as cocoons, so you might see them there, or birds might eat them.

[chuff]

My gooseberries didn't do very well last year ??? I planted them the previous autumn so it would have been there first season, I did get 1 or 2 goosegogs but the bushes we devoured by sawfly  >:(