Allotments 4 All

The gooseberry bush looks fab: verdant, healthy etc.

Early last year, mother gave it to me as a 2-3 y/old plant. She found it in her patio pots as a tiny plant grown from an 'inherited' seed (we assume). Shortly after receiving it I transplanted it into enriched soil and it took off. Lovely, I thought.

It was pruned (last years' growth, leave 5 stems for this year etc) at the right time this year. I hoped to have had some fruit, instead it's giving me leaves.

So my questions are:
Am I just being impatient?
Is there an optimum age for fruit bearing?
Are gooseberries from seed non-starters (ie: do they have to be grafted like tree fruit)?

For reference, it's planted between the rhubarb and sage; just in case they're mortal enemies....

Hi there,

My gooseberry did not produce berries the first three years.
Then it started to fruit and it is been doing so for the last four years. Sometimes I am the only one in my block that has gooseberries in a certain year.
I didn't change a thing: not moved it to another location, not fed it better, not pruned it differently.

So my advise is to give it another year before you chop it off.

It is probably still settling in and you need to wait another year or two. Once it begins cropping it will do so every year after that.

Gooseberries are tough plants. It takes a lot to kill them so I wouldnt worry about what plants grow nearby as long as they don't grow in amongst the gooseberry foliage.

Sometimes older plants take longer to establish than 1 year old cuttings so this could be why you hsve no fruit so far.

Keep pruning as usual and fruits will eventually form.

Ok...pruning..your gooseberry should not need much pruning in young age. Just removing some congestion from the middle of the bush and shortening all long new growth down a bit should be perfectly enough as it needs some mature growth to produce flowers from.
You don't need to reduce the amount of stems unless the numbers of them prevent you getting you hands in the middle..and even that is up to you.
You should see my bushes.. :-X...they are grown together in continues 'hedge'..and admittedly I keep pruning to absolute minimum, if any and my bushes produce fruit more than we can cope with.
In my opinion, as with other fruit bushes, there is instructions going around that fruit bushes need 'x amount' of pruning..wrong!..they need only a amount of pruning to keep them healthy enough and manageable size and that's it..any more and we are cutting potential crops down. I suspect that like with rose pruning advise..it all originate from 'competition era'..when fruit, berries and flowers was grown to look as big and beautiful as possible.
I only got one red currant bush and that produce every year couple of bucketfulls of berries..as all the other bushes too. I grow mine for quantity of crops.
Oh..I'm starting to rants.. :-X ::) ..can't help it..last year when in GW program Monty was pruning his currant bushes I felt like hitting my head against brickwall. What is a point of growing dozen fruit bushes and having to keep cut them down to able to fit them into available space when you can grow only 2 or 3 in same space and get more crop and less work when allowing them grow how nature intended them to be...they are naturally Big bushes.
And same goes for gooseberries..I only prune enough to keep those hand shredding thorns slightly away when comes to picking time.. ;)..and often not even that..I just stick cane into ground bend the stem that is in 'wrong' place into available 'free' space, tie it into cane and get perfectly positioned branch .. ;D..and I've got potentially more berries to pick again.. ;D
Phew..that's off from my 'chest' again.. ::) ;D
No..gooseberries are not crafted and your bush 'companions' should not prevent it from fruiting unless rhubarb will over take it..otherwise they should be fine.

I am not sure whether your weed gooseberry will be a good variety.  The breeders will grow loads of seedlings and then select the best and grow them on.  They are then propagated from cuttings.  So it will be pot luck as to whether you have a good un.  

The famous bramley apple turned up out of the blue, so you might just be lucky.

Unlike black currants which fruit on last years growth gooseberries fruit on older wood, so check the pruning instructions so you do not cut off the fruiting branches.   I agree with Goodlife that such a young bush would not need much pruning.  The only pruning I do it to pin the odd branch into the soil and then cut it off once it has rooted.

I bought some twigs from Lidl and they are fruiting this year year four.  This year I also bought some Hinamaki Red from a Nursery £3.50 and they are already fruiting year 1.  

In my Gran's 'farm' we regularly picked berries from self seeded bushes that were all over the place in nearby hill..seeds deposited by birds. The bushes were never that big, nor the berries as they were growing in wild.
With self seeded bushes the quality/look of the fruit might not be as good/same as the parent bush..but like Digeroo said..you might be lucky and get fruit that although don't look the best (might be even slightly more 'hairy') but there is the possibility that you win with the outstanding flavour.
Our family still 'grieve' after those selfseeded gooseberry bushes that we had in my other granparents place..the berries were quite small..hairy but OH SO tasty. Sadly the house burned down and the bushes with them and we never had chance to duplicate them from the cuttings.

I drastically pruned my 3 new invicta gooseberry bushes as I want the goblet shape with air space in the centre. I also want a leg so that there is free space for 8 inches up from the ground. I did this last autumn and the plants have been bedding down for a year before then. I want air to prevent mildew, space to allow predators in to eat aphids, sawfly etc and the leg so that I don`t have to crouch down to the ground. So far so good, plenty of new growth and some fruit. This autumn I will be very selective and should only have to take out a bit here and there. The plants are looking A1

I have had invicta for a long time in a previous house and got endless pounds of fruit

My first thought was it probably has to much of a good soil underneath it.
I find that the ones i neglect in the front garden in poor soil dont grow as much but produce more fruit than the ones in lovely rich soil in the back of the same age that seem to make lots of new growth and not to many berries.

So leaving it there and waiting would work becuase over time it will deplete lots of the nitrogen that it has and grow into a bigger bush and then fruit, but maybe dont give it the same manure you might give the rhubarb in the winter?

Hope that under all those leaves there are a few lovely berries.
You dont have lots of fruit stealing thrushes and blackbirds do you? check for flowers next year to.
good luck
x sunloving