North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Lee Reich <lreich@hvc.rr.com>]

My picks for gooseberries that combine very good flavor with very good disease resistance are Poorman, Black Satin, Red Jacket (not the European variety with this same name), and Glendale, all of which thrive in my NY's Zone 5 Hudson Valley farmden. Hinonmakis Yellow is an excellent variety except that it has not borne well for the past two years; it is very weak growing and was too inundated by other plants. I've moved it.

The very best tasting gooseberries are those European ones, such as Whitesmith, Webster, etc. They have very mean thorns and are very susceptible to mildew. 

Pixwell is small, tough, and too tart, not worth growing at all, in my opinion. I also don't consider Hinonmakis Red (aka Lepaa Red) worth growing or eating.

As far as blackcurrants, I like the taste of Titania very much. Other favorites are some of the Russian varieties, such as Kirovchanka and Belaruskaja. As a matter of fact, they are among my favorite of all fruits! I'm digging up all my Consorts as well as Ben Sarek, the latter having large berries but, to me, bad tasting.

Lee Reich, PhD

http://www.leereich.com/

Books by Lee Reich:

A Northeast Gardener's Year

The Pruning Book

Weedless Gardening

Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden

Landscaping with Fruit

On Nov 5, 2009, at 10:45 AM, Kieran &/or Donna wrote:

Gooseberry update:
   In researching the varieties you all mentioned and recommended, I found
out that American gooseberry mildew invaded England and NZ in the 1980's,
creating a sudden flurry of breeding activity which we in the eastern US can
benefit from.   The Hinnonmaki gooseberry varieties came from a plant or
plants collected wild off a Finnish island and apparently they had no idea
what a gem they had found.  Whether these are actually wild collected or
crosses of a wild plant, they are very disease resistant, not just to mildew
but also to the cursed leaf spot.  The taller red one must have originally
been called "Leepa Red" but someone has decided it would be better to link
it name-wise to the little best seller, Hinnonmaki or Hinomaki Yellow.
(This is shortened Finnish that just happens to read like Japanese.)
   The gooseberry seems to have been extremely popular in England as
something that the average backyard gardener could play with and produce his
own crosses, so thousands of vars have been named.  These will probably be
largely swept away by the new disease to be replaced by crosses of our
native vars (many of them crosses to the Euro) and of new collected vars or
old lesser known cultivars that turn out resistant.  I think it was John S
who recommended Red Jacket aka Josslyn, which sounded good but my old Rodale
book said it was prone to mildew if grown further south.  I would like to
try Invicta (which seemed to have the most supporters and detractors),
Jahn's Prairie and Jeanne,  but prefer to start with sure bets.  I
definitely want to try Glenndale, but only Edible Landscaping carries it for
a $20 price tag.

   The oft reviled Canadian black currant releases Consort, Crusader and
that other one have been crossed to European black currants to produce Ben
Lomand, now the most widely planted black currant in Europe for juice, and
others in the Scottish "Ben" series.  (Ben meaning mountain.)  Resistance
varies, I hope in a year or two there are more of these available.  Titania
doesn't sound all that great to me, has anyone tasted it?

I put in my order to Whitman Farms:

2 Hinomaki Yellow (and they are little bitty horizontal guys, nothing like
the others!)
1 Hinomaki Red
1 amish Red
1 Crandall currant
1 Ben Lomand
1 Ben Sarek
1 Black Down

With shipping they ran $10 each.  I was idly wondering if I might want to
change my order when the plants suddenly arrived, 8 days after I dropped my
check in the mail!  It must have been their first shipping day, as there
were still leaves on some of the plants.  I put the little H yellows right
in the garden in the rose row, plenty of thorns for company there, and the
Crandall down at the end of the blueberry row as it sounds like it might
come in so late it could be netted with them.  The others are in pots while
I study my compass and the tree line for the black currants to be shaded in
the afternoon.  This is the first time I've seen what the thorns on
gooseberries are normally like.  When I told my husband that the local plant
I collected is the lowest of the low flavorwise and told him the name, he
exclaimed, "Pigswill?  What kind of name is that?!"  I said, "Pixwell,
Pixwell, because it doesn't have many thorns."  But it will be called
Pigswill in this household forever more.  I know that's what it is because
the fruit starts out sour, then goes completely insipid when it's ripe.
Never seems to have any other flavor.  I got out this past sunny weekend,
yes, sunshine, I'd forgotten what it was like, and dug out a 4 young mimosa
trees and all kinds of weeds that were competing, and found about 5 rooted
sprouts around the edges of my Pigswill plant.  Next some phosphate, and
Rodale press said that Ribes do better without commercial fertilizer so I'll
just give it some rock dust and a speck of fertilizer next spring.  The
plant's really big enough, I'd just like it to crop better till my new
plants kick in.
   I think the info on new Ribes introductions is worth getting into Pomona
for the winter issue, so that people have time to order for spring.  Any
further comments you'd like to see included?    Donna

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