hahahahaha! Gotcha! 
Dax
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Good, what a huge plant they sent!
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I had a Poorman that tested at 18 brix today, which is my highest reading yet for a gooseberry. I still have the bush netted and will give them a few more days if they don’t start dropping too much. . Invicta and Hinnomaki Red have been averaging 12-14 so far this year.
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I’ve been impressed with Tixia. Very large berries and not a lot of thorns on the plant. I like the taste of all gooseberries so this was no different.
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Just wanted to comment on my experience with a few varieties. Varieties listed below are from top to bottom in picture.
Hinnomaki red: very flavorful but much more tart than other varieties. Need to leave on plant as long as possible which becomes an issue because the red color is attractive to birds. Plant seems to have a lower stature than my others. Very thorny
Invicta: good flavor. Some of my fruit are getting a prominent reddish blush on them (much more than shown in picture) making me think they could be a mislabeled variety. Any one else experience this? Vigorous growth. Large thorns but easier to avoid than the numerous smaller thorns on hr.
Captivator: upright sprawling plant. Sweet large berries. Thicker skin than my other varieties. Few thorns. Probably my favorite for fresh eating.
Pixwell: small but sweet berries. Minimal thorns. Canes fall over and spread along ground.
Also, I’ve seen a lot posted about what a pain it is to “tip and tail” gooseberries. I just eat them as is. The stem and flower end have similar texture to remainder of fruit and I don’t even notice it when eating fresh.
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Excellent.
However, my Pixwell is as large as Hinnomaki Red. (And has to also stay on the vine longer than birds allow to become fully ripened.)
(Netting allowed me to finally eat a ripe Pixwell).
The small size of my pixwell could be due to the fact that it is in a very shady location and also because I have aggressively layered my original plant to become a 12ft long hedgerow over the course of just 2 years. I would assume all that new vegetative growth would take some energy away from fruit production.
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Could be. As so many things, getting all the facts before forming an opinion is best.
I know you didn’t intend to mislead anybody, but Pixwell isn’t smaller than Hinnomaki.
And I have Captivator and hope it has huge berries…but it has not produced yet…probably next year.
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I have captivator and really like it. Berries aren’t huge…but there are a few chunkers on there. Very sweet up front…then gooseberry. Lol.
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I don’t worry about tip/tail, either, but if you bag 'em and freeze 'em, you can pull the bag out of freezer and roll/massage it vigorously between your palms, and most tips & tails will break off.
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Regarding the relative sizes and differences between cultivars, there is actually a large amount of variation on the same plant. These are all ripe berries from my captivator. All of them basically fell off when I brushed my hand lightly against them indicating they all have same level of ripeness. Some are round, some teardrop, some large, some small, some greenish, some reddish. The overall flavor profile and “average” berry from each variety is consistent but individual berries can look quite different.
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Quite right. My Pixwell had small berries and I thought it only bears small size berries. But this year, its berry size isn’t small. It is as big as my other berries. All I did was pruned it in early spring
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This was my first year getting fruit from my Comanche/Original Red Jacket Gooseberry (I planted a dormant stick in 2020). I picked it up on trade and had no expectations for it. Wow- it made a great first impression! The fruit actually look and taste like Jeanne, but sweeter, larger, and the plant is more productive! On the down side, it has very large thorns- much larger than Black Velvet. I do not recall seeing anyone mentioning this gooseberry on this forum, so I thought that I would give it a plug.
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Hadn’t heard of that one. My Black Velvet has been such a shy bearer…maybe it doesn’t like being grown in containers.
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Does anyone here have experience on deer resistance across different varieties? I would assume the more thorny the better when it comes to deer. I recently purchased some land with a lot of deer pressure and was planning on putting in rooted cuttings along the woodline.
@ZombieFruit Any chances you will have any sticks to sell or trade this fall of the Comanche gooseberry?
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I like captivator the best of the 8 or so varieties I’ve tried, and it’s relatively less thorny.
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I could probably get 2-3 cuttings from it this year. PM me in the winter or spring to remind me.
I’m growing Poorman, Jeanne Pierre, Black Velvet and Oregon. They are all good but different. Poorman is the sweetest but many thorns and low vigor. Jeanne Pierre is sweet with few thorns and medium vigor. Black Velvet is the most vigorous. The berries are small and dark, some sourness but very flavorful. Oregon is very healthy and low growing but has not yet produced berries although it did flower.
Not sure if it is considered a dessert gooseberry or not but I recently got my first berries off an Oregon champion I purchased from tsc last season. It is a fast grower and the berries were pretty good in my opinion. Does anyone else have experience with this variety? I have two Hinnonmaki Reds that are growing more slowly but I hear good things about them. Hopefully next season I can finally try them 
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