gooseberries – Lee Reich

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UNCOMMON BERRIES, FOR SOME

June 30, 2021/16 Comments/in Fruit/by Lee Reich

Note: If you live in a very hot summer climate, skip Part A and proceed to Part B.

Part A. Perfect for Ambulant Consumption

Part A. It’s about time that gooseberries got some respect. The plants are easy to grow, they tolerate shade, are usually ignored by deer and birds, except my ducks, and they can have excellent flavor. They don’t do very well or yield the tastiest fruits in hot summer climates, hence “Skip to Part B,” although the coolness of shade can somewhat overcome that deficiency.
A bowl of fresh gooseberries
Gooseberry flavor is what eludes most people. And with good reason; relatively few of you have tasted gooseberries, let alone good-tasting varieties. The reason is that gooseberries belong to the Ribes genus, many plants of which are susceptible to a disease called white pine blister rust. This disease, also attacking white pines, need both white pines and susceptible Ribes plants to complete its life cycle.

When the rust showed up on American shores about 100 years ago, white pine was an important lumber crop so the U.S. government sought to control the rust be getting rid of all Ribes plants. Not only were gooseberries illegal to plant but if you already had gooseberries or currants, another Ribes species, in your garden, fellas from the Civilian Conservation Corps were apt to descent out of the woods into you garden to rip them out.

Long story short: Before the rust, gooseberries were an up and coming fruit, just like blueberries, which were relatively unknown except near where they grew wild. The ban was not as effective as was hoped. Disease could spread from the many wild Ribes haunt that our woodlands, and under the right conditions infective spores can be carried for hundreds of miles. On top of that, gooseberries and redcurrants are not very susceptible to the fungus.

The federal ban was lifted in 1966 and put under state mandate, but two generations of farmers and gardeners had forgotten about gooseberries. Relatively few states nowadays ban gooseberries.

Dessert (vs Culinary) Gooseberries

I once nurtured my own gooseberry variety collection of almost 50 varieties, a collection that now has been pared down to the most desirable dozen or so. I only grow what are known as “dessert” varieties of gooseberry, ones that have great flavor straight off the bushes. As Edward Bunyard wrote in his 1929 classic The Anatomy of Dessert, “The gooseberry is the fruit of course par excellence for ambulant consumption.”
Gooseberry varieties on bench
This growing season has, so far, been one of the best fruit years ever, so I’m taking particular note of ripening time and flavor of my gooseberries. (Like a fine wine, though, they do seem to have vintage years.) First to ripen here is the variety Canada 0-273; its main qualities are that the plant is always productive and yielding large and early fruit.

Canada 0-273 gooseberry

Next comes Poorman, an unfortunate name for a very delectable berry. Almost ripe now is Captivator, the variety I would grow if I were to grow only one variety. It’s delicious and pretty much thornless.

Poorman gooseberry

Soon to ripen are Red Jacket, very reliable and productive, with good flavor, and Welcome. Welcome is still with me for sentimental reasons; it was one of the first fruits I ever planted, decades ago, and has traveled with me to my gardens from Wisconsin to Delaware to Maryland to New York. It’s flavor is very similar to “SweeTart” candies.

Following the above varieties is another variety that would be on a must have list. Hinnonmakis Yellow is yellowish-green when ripe and has a flavor that hints of apricot. Some people confuse it with Hinnonmakis Red, which has poor flavor, and whose real name is, I believe, Lepaa Red. Also soon to ripen is Black Satin which has a rich, wine-y flavor.

That’s not all of them but does give you an inkling of the merits of the most significant ones. There are literally hundreds of varieties of gooseberries, spurred in part beginning in 18th century England, by gooseberry competitions, held usually in local inns, to see who could grow the largest fruits. The gaiety of singing and refreshments at these shows was offset by the solemn weighing of fruits.

Those gooseberries were bred strictly for size. I plant for flavor. Did I mention, pest problems of gooseberry? Powdery mildew and leaf spot diseases are potential problems but all the varieties I mentions are resistant to these diseases.

For more about the growing, the varieties, etc. of gooseberries, see my book Grow Fruit Naturally.

Part B. Some Mulberries are Better than Others

Part B. Some kind of mulberry can be grown just about everywhere. Here in the Hudson Valley, we have wild or cultivated red mulberries, which are native, white mulberries, most of which were imported from Asia in the early 1800s, and hybrids of the two. Don’t expect the color of a tree’s fruit, despite even the botanical names, Morus rubra and M. alba, to tell you what species you have before you. Many “white” (M. alba) mulberries or their hybrids bear black fruit.

To throw yet another wrench into the nomenclature, there’s yet another species, M. nigra or black mulberry, with black fruits. I consider black mulberry to be among the best-flavored of all fruits, not just mulberries. Unfortunately, it’s not hardy here. I grow it in a pot.

Black mulberry, M. nigra

Most years birds get just about all my mulberries; not this year, perhaps because of an abundance of other fruits. So I’ve been getting a good taste of them.

I find the flavor of most wild mulberries cloying. Not so for the two varieties I grow.

I, along with many others, have lent high praise to the variety Illinois Everbearing, often likening its flavor to that of black mulberries. This year I’ve reconsidered; Illinois Everbearing fruits are better than the average mulberry you might see growing in Eastern North America, but not nearly as good as black mulberry. Illinois Everbearing does live up to the “everbearing” in its name, yielding berry after berry for weeks on end.

Illinois Everbearing mulberry

My other variety is Oscar. It’s delicious, with a nice balance of acidity and sweetness.

Oscar mulberry

Other years my impression of the two varieties has been different. Perhaps mulberries and gooseberries have vintage years that influence the flavors of particular varieties.

I actually grow one more variety of mulberry, Pakistani. This is yet another species, M. Macloura, that was once considered a kind of white mulberry. Pakistani, like black mulberry isn’t hardy here (probably hardy to Zone 7, perhaps colder) so I grow it in a pot. The fruit is delicious and large, sometimes as much as five inches long! My potted tree’s fruits are only an inch and a half long, but they’re as delicious as black mulberries. Different flavor though.

Black Pakistani

HOW GREEN, OR NOT, IS MY THUMB?

October 3, 2014/14 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Planning/by Lee Reich

Apples a Bust, Pears a Success, Gooseberries a Bust, etc.

Early autumn is a good time for me to find a sunny spot on the terrace with a comfortable chair, pluck a bunch of grapes from the arbor overhead, and ponder the fruits of this year’s labors. And I mean “fruits,” literally: what were my successes, what were my failures, and what do future seasons hold?

In good years, my apples are very, very good; Hudson’s Golden Gem here.

To many people, to too many people, “fruit” means apples, the equivalence having deep roots since pomum is Latin for both apple and fruit. My apple crop this year, whether measured in pounds or number of fruits, is zero. Among my excuses are the wrong rootstock for the site, trees still recovering from last year’s onslaught of 17-year cicada egg-laying, apples’ pest problems making them among the most difficult fruits to grow east of the Rocky Mountains, and my low-lying valley location and surrounding forests further exacerbating pest problems.

Still, the rich flavor of the apples — when I do get some — keeps me trying. Next year I’m replanting with five new trees: Hudson’s Golden Gem, Macoun, Ashmead’s Kernel, Pitmaston Pineapple, and Liberty, all on Geneva 30 rootstocks. This year, I welcomed the time not needed in caring for the trees.

Pears did surprisingly well considering the extensive cicada damage they also endured. But pears always do well, especially the Asian pears. The challenge with European pears is ripening them to perfection. They need to be picked before they are ripe, chilled for a couple of weeks if they are an early maturing variety, then ripened in a cool room. As soon as the first fruits drop, I keep an eye out for a slight change in skin color for those fruits still hanging from branches, then take them if they separate with an easy snap when lifted and twisted from the branch.

Despite being relatively easy to grow, pears are underappreciated as garden fruit — these days, at least. One-hundred and fifty years ago, you might have perused 70 varieties in a nursery catalog; a hundred years ago, perhaps 30 varieties; in today’s catalogs, I count a dozen or so varieties. Not all my two dozen or so varieties are bearing yet. So far, the best of the lot are the buttery sweet Magness and spicy Seckel.

And More Failures

But let me get back to my failures; get them out of the way. Hardy kiwifruits, both Actinidia arguta and A. kolomikta had uncharacteristically light crops. The same goes for pawpaws, whose branches have, except for this fall, every year been weighted down with a heavy load of fruit, some branches even breaking. It’s most convenient to point my finger at the weather, the winter cold, for barren kiwi vines and pawpaw trees. Not that it was as cold as many past winters, but it did stay cold for longer periods.

The gooseberry crop looked very promising until late June, which is when my chickens discovered them (or remembered where they were). Gooseberries are usually very reliable so I’m optimistic about the future of eating berries from the two dozen or so dessert varieties I grow. I downsized my flock from seven to three chickens (and added two ducks), and plan to erect temporary fencing during the few weeks that the berries ripen in future years.

Big crops presented themselves, as usual, on various mulberry varieties and gumi. Birds swooped in to gobble them up. Last year, with all the cicadas to feed on, birds ignored both these fruits. Geraldi Dwarf mulberry grows only a few feet high so I’ll throw a net over it next year and let birds enjoy the other mulberry varieties, if they so choose.

The Very Sweet Taste of Success(es)

Enough talk about failures. On to successes . . . blueberries, my favorite and most reliable fruit, bore in abundance, as always. Sixteen bushes; about 150 quarts. Mmmmm.

Bagged grapes next to a bunch of grapes that weren’t bagged

Rain earlier in the season threatened grapes with disease. I enclosed about 75 bunches in white bakery bags, stapled shut, to fend off bees and wasps, diseases, and birds. The crop was in such abundance that harvest has been aplenty even from unbagged bunches. Actually, too “aplenty” from the variety Swenson’s Red, causing individual berries in bunches to ripen unevenly. Next year, I’ll prune more severely, sacrificing total yield while increasing quality and even ripening of fruits that remain.

Once unbagged grapes of a given variety have been harvested and eaten, we move on to the bagged grapes of that variety. Peeling back the white paper has generally revealed bunches that look perfect and taste delectable. Particularly tasty this year have been Glenora Seedless, Somerset Seedless, Mars, Swenson’s White, and Brianna.

Szukis American persimmon ripe on branches

And finally, another of my no-fail, no-spray, no-prune fruits: American persimmon, specifically the varieties Mohler and Szukis. Mohler has been ripening for about a month, dropping a dozen or so fruits daily, which I pick up from the ground. My ducks are especially fond of these fruits, and waddle, staring longingly within, around the outside perimeter of the low, temporary fence that keeps them at bay. (They do get to eat fruits that drop beyond the fence.)

Frustrated ducks admiring my persimmons.

The soft fruits taste like dried apricots that have been plumped in water, dipped in honey, and given a dash of spice. Mohler and Szukis are almost totally lacking in the puckery astringency common to many American persimmons. To remove any last traces of astringency, I subject fruits to a treatment used in Japan with Asian persimmons: alcohol. Freshly harvest fruits go into a bowl with a tablespoon of rye (locally made Coppersea Raw Rye), covered, for a day. The alcohol finishes ripening the fruits, keeps fruit flies at bay, and adds a nice punch to the flavor.

Grow Fruit, Many Kinds!

Too many people shy away from growing fruits because they are perceived as too difficult to grow. They can be; or not. Success comes from choosing the right fruits to grow, looking beyond apples, peaches, cherries, and the other usual fare. Success also comes from growing a wide variety fruits. (All this is covered in my newest book, Grow Fruit Naturally.) This year’s apple and gooseberry failures are hardly noticed with the abundance of blueberries, persimmons, and pears. And did I mention European black currants, red currants, and strawberries?

Chickens & Gooseberries, A Bad Combination

June 26, 2014/2 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee A. Reich

Chickens, Gooseberries, Rose Pruning & Asparagus

Good gardening is not religion. Balancing and rebalancing is what’s needed, not the constraints of dogma. You want to garden naturally? Dogma would dictate doing nothing, in which case you wouldn’t have a garden. You want to grow only native plants? Then forget about tomatoes, apples, and tulips. And are the plants you want to grow truly native on your “back forty,” or down the road where the soil is slightly wetter in summer?

Gooseberries and chickens are what turned my thoughts to the need for balance today. I grow over a dozen varieties of gooseberries, dessert gooseberries with flavors akin to those of grape, plum, and apricot. I also “grow” seven Bantam chickens; they provide decoration, insect control, eggs, and some degree of entertainment.

On the downside, chickens’ scratching in my garden beds in search of insects and seeds messes up what could be a very neat and orderly space. (Or, looked at in a more positive light, the chickens’ scratching adds a cottage-y blowsiness to the scene.) A four-foot-high fence surrounding the two vegetable gardens keeps out the chickens and those gardens productive. An eighteen-inch-high fence around some other garden areas was meant to, if not to definitely keep the poultry out of those areas, at least to make them do their own balancing, weighing the benefit of entering the fenced area against having to vault the fence. (Clipped wings tips the balance somewhat more in favor of not vaulting the fence, but not enough.)

A few days ago I noticed that this year’s especially good crop of gooseberries in the making were no longer in the making; most were gone. Gooseberries rarely suffer from late frost, at least here, so that could not be the reason. Gooseberries do not need cross-pollination, and, anyway, I have plenty of varieties for cross-pollination and bumblebees were buzzing all over the bushes in bloom. So pollination issues could not be the problem either.

Chicken and young, gooseberry bandits

I lay blame for the paltry crop of gooseberries squarely on the shoulders of the chickens, who have been hopping the low fence around the planting for weeks. Mostly, they seemed to be scratching the ground beneath and around the gooseberry plants but I wouldn’t put it past them to help themselves to berries also.

So, what to do? Putting a four-foot-high fence around the gooseberry beds would keep the chickens at bay but, with all the other fencing here, the scene could begin to look like a prison. The chickens could become soup. Or I could allow the chickens their indulgence.

Another balancing act: Roses, now in bloom, look great either on the plant or in a vase. For roses that bloom all season long, cutting the blossoms coaxes new ones forth. A win-win situation. Except that towards the end of the season, it’s best that plants get ready for winter by slowing down and toughening up. Letting rose blossoms remain on the plant and go on to make fruits — rose hips — helps slow them down.

A couple of weeks ago, a visitor looking at my asparagus patch commented on how nice it was that I still had asparagus to harvest. Of course asparagus was still coming on strong; it was only early June!Balance again.

<“>Asparagus is a perennial vegetable whose spring spears are fueled by energy stored over winter in the plants’ roots. For a good asparagus harvest, the goal is to balance spear harvest against the plants’ need to pack away extra energy, created by photosynthesis, in their roots.

Greenery is needed for photosynthesis. If spears are harvested all season long or even for too much of the season, roots are left with insufficient energy reserves going into winter. The result: Plants either die or push forth few, spindly spears the following spring.

So the tack is to harvest for a period in spring short enough to let plants start packing away fuel for winter and the following spring. A good balance is struck by allowing about eight weeks for harvest. After the end of June, spears emerge and then unfold into those ferny fronds which, left untouched until they turn brown in autumn, have time to create energy and store away energy in the roots for another eight weeks of harvest the following year.

With warm weather, asparagus needs to be harvest every couple of days or so. At each harvest, I cut down each and every spear, including those that are too skinny for eating or those that escaped previous harvest and have begun to unfold ferny foliage. Thorough harvest not only keeps new, fat spears emerging but also helps control asparagus beetles. These beetles feed on those early emerging spears. Cut all the spears early in the season and the beetles starve.

If you have never seen the beetles, look on the spears for small, black specks. Those are beetle eggs. Just wipe or hose them off, or go ahead and eat them with the spears. Asparagus and eggs is a classic combination — admittedly, the eggs for this combination are chicken eggs. Perhaps the chickens should stay.

The Unknown Known

May 16, 2014/2 Comments/in /by Lee A. Reich

To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, defense secretary under W, there are the known knowns, the known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns. Donald, you forgot about the unknown knowns. Lets talk about gardening, not war, and the knowns that need to be better known.

Visitors to my garden (actually workshop attendees) were oohing and ahing over some 18-inch-high stalks each capped with a crown of leaves beneath which dangled a circle of red blossoms. Aptly named crown imperial, Fritillaria imperialis, deserves to be more widely known. No one seemed put off by the skunky aroma that suffuses the air even feet away from the plant; I like it.

Perhaps crown imperial would be better known if the bulbs didn’t go for more than 10 dollars each. My gardens’ profusion of crown imperial stalks is more an indication of my green thumb than my wealth. They all arose from a single bulb my father gifted me more than 20 years ago. I learned to propagate them by bulb scaling, which involves digging down into the ground to remove scales from the bulb, then mixing the scales with barely moist potting soil. After a couple of months storage at warm temperatures followed by a couple of months storage at cool temperatures, the scales can be potted up to be nursed for a season before planting out.

Every year I make new crown imperial plants. Will I ever have too many?

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F. michailovskyi

Crown imperial also has some unknown known kin. You have to see Persian lily, Fritillaria persica, to appreciate it. A written description — foot-high stalks lined with nodding, small, plum purple to gray green flowers — doesn’t do justice to the beauty of this bulb. I hope to start multiplying this one also. Another unknown known is Fritillaria michailovskyi, this one with nodding, bell-shaped flowers with yellow-tipped, purple petals.

F. persica

F. meleagris

Among crown imperial’s kin is also a known known: Guinea hen flower, F. meleagris, with large, nodding, checkered flowers. Even White Flower Farm sells these bulbs for less than a dollar each. No wonder they are better known.

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Let’s segue over to unknown knowns among fruits.

Right now, a billowing wave of white blossoms lines my driveway, the blossoms of Nanking cherry (Prunus tomentosum), a shrub that can grow 8 feet high and wide. The show matches that of any other flowering tree or shrub.

What do other flowering trees and shrubs — forsythia, lilac, flowering cherries, and the like — offer after their flower shows subsides? Nothing, nada, zip. Nanking cherry, though, goes on to bear oodles of small red cherries with a flavor somewhere between that of sweet and tart cherries.

And what does it take to get a decent crop of sweet or tart cherries? Pruning, perhaps spraying and bird control. What does it take to get a crop of Nanking cherries? Nothing, nada, zip. The plants bear heavily with little or no care, and bear enough to satisfy birds, squirrels, and humans.

Okay, every rose has it’s thorns. Nanking cherries are small, one-half to five-eighths of an inch in diameter. The smallness is more than offset by plant’s beauty, its profusion of fruits, and its low maintenance .

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And one more unknown known: gooseberries (both gooseberries and Nanking cherries warrant a whole chapter in my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden).

Many people imagine all gooseberries to be small, green, and tart, suitable mostly for cooking. Not so! There are over a hundred varieties of gooseberry in various colors and sizes, and a whole category of them, what the Brits call “dessert varieties,” are for fresh eating. Good flavor is what should warrant gooseberries known known status among fruits.

Most important in growing gooseberries is to choose a good variety, both for taste and for resistance to disease powdery mildew. Don’t plant Pixwell; the berries are small, green, and tart. Do plant varieties such as Poorman, Chief, Hinonmakis Yellow, Red Jacket, Captivator, and Glendale. They’re all tasty and disease resistant.

If you want even better flavor and you’re willing to deal with powdery mildew, plant varieties such as Colossal, Whitesmith, Achilles, and Webster. Dealing with powdery mildew involves spraying, but it could be something relatively benign, such as horticultural oil, sulfur, baking soda, soap, or horticultural oil plus baking soda (1-1∕2 tablespoons baking soda plus 3 tablespoons oil in 1 gallon water).

Right about now, gooseberries can experience one more pest, the imported currantworm, which strips plants of their leaves, beginning at ground level. The leaves will grow back but the plant is left weakened. A spray just as soon as chewing begins will stop this insect in its tracks and, again, benign products such as insecticidal soap or horticultural oil should be effective. I’m training some of my plants as 3-foot-high trees, which might also thwart the worm because there’ll be no leaves near ground level on which the insects can begin their feast.

If all this seems like too much potential trouble for gooseberries, it’s not. The best dessert varieties have flavors that might be compared to that of grape, plum, or apricot, and have a “cracking” texture, a crisp flesh that explodes with ambrosial juice when you bite into them. A writer of the last century characterized gooseberries as “the fruit par excellence for ambulant consumption.” I agree, and you might also if they become a known known in your garden.