Based on the descriptions of the websites trying to sell them, Jostaberries are WONDERFUL. Based on posts written by people who own them, they are not worth your time or space.
Is there anyone out there who loves Jostaberries more than other varieties?
I would love to hear from people who own a jostaberry and one other type of gooseberry, Would you trade your Jostaberry for another copy of one of your other gooseberries?
Growing both now but have tried neither. Interested in others responses.
I have a Jostaberry and before full ripeness,are suppose to taste like Gooseberries,having never tried,but should.Then they become dark and are more like Currants.
Having sampled them at different stages,the flavor isn’t real pleasing to me.
One of the easiest plants to propagate.
I removed my Jostaberry. I prefer gooseberry.
At peak ripeness I think they are good. Before peak they are pretty bad. I looked at it like this. They are cheap plants and do not take a lot of space. Easy to remove later if need be.
I have a couple… should get first fruit this year. Before I bought them watched several folks growing and eating them on youtube… and of course bragging on flavor.
My first attempt was in a full sun location… and they both died… started again in morning sun location last year and that is working.
Hope they do taste ok… should know in a month or two.
TNhunter
Here is one…
TN
if tasted jostaberry’s from some-one elses bush.
And got plenty of goosberry’s from my own bushes.
their just different. Jostaberry has some of the blackcurrent and some of the goosberry flavor. And also somthing else to it.
If id had to choose between 2 equally filled bowls of fruit. Id go for the goosberry’s.
However the josta’s are easier to grow. and spineless. So a fairer comparision would be a spineles goosberry (most of them don’t taste good to me) vs jostaberry.
In the end it probably comes down to personal preference whitch one you like most. I like variety and got a “gotta collect em all” mindset. So im keeping both.
I plant the berry’s in the shade/ at the bottom of fruit tree’s. They thrive there. Good fruit, good healthy plants. Grow a little slower than neighbours full sun and open plants. But i get more an tastier fruit from smaller plants. So no complaints from me.
This might be harder with jostaberry. It’s quite vigerous. So keeping it smalle enough to fit between fruit tree’s is gonna be a challange.
I have it for ~8 year, maybe longer. It is a easy to grow plant and disease free. The fruits are larger(gooseberry size) than currants, with hint of black currants flavor but not as strong. It tastes not as sour as regular gooseberries. I usually eat it fresh right out of hand. Black currants are so small that are pain to pick and gooseberries are so thorny. I like the jostaberry which meets in the middle. The only thing I want to complain is that it does not produce as many fruits as either its parents.
I’ve got a jostaberry and about six types of gooseberries. Flavor-wise, jostaberry is my least favorite of the bunch. But it’s a larger plant than any of the gooseberries and is super productive. So, I keep it because of the processing value it lends to my orchard. If you’ve got the space, it’s a good plant to have. If you’re short on space, there are better options.
I have a josta, a few types of gooseberry, a red currant, and a black currant. I think the josta fruit is better than the currants and better than some gooseberries, but not as good as the best gooseberries. I like how it grows though. I have attempted to semi-espalier all these plants and I would say the josta has been the easiest because the growth is more vigorous and the shoots are easy to train to wires. I like that it isn’t thorny too. My josta is more productive than most of my gooseberries and the black currant. Last year I mostly made them into jam, which is tasty. My family is not that into eating a ton of any of these berries fresh.
These are planted in semi-shady areas that would not be able to grow sun loving fruits. So I’m happy with them in that context. If I were choosing again I would not change anything. I think having all three is good. If I had to pick just one it would be josta or gooseberry, but I would have to think about it.
Here is my bush last July. Probably around 2.5m across.
@HollyGates.
Mine have grown pretty much straight up so far…did you have to train yours to go horizontal ?
Yeah, they do want to go up naturally. I had to strap them down to the wires to make them flat. The trellis wasn’t built until a few years after I planted it so the pieces were not really in the right place to start strapping. As a result the look is not perfect; more of an “informal” espalier. Sometimes I ask myself why I feel the need to strap all these plants to wires… maybe it says something about my personality. But my excuse is that I have a small yard and I want to try to get the most out of it, plus I think espalier is cool.
I grew jostaberry and currants when I lived in NE (also had gooseberry but never got fruit from them). In relation to currants, the jostaberry is much better IMO. Red and Black currants were just way too tart/bitter for me with almost no sweetness. The jostaberry was much better balanced. If I were able to grow them again, I would probably skip it and just go for gooseberries as they are supposed to be sweeter (and plenty have already commented that they taste better).
My josta is about 4 years old now, massive (about 5x5 feet) and hardly produces any fruit. The fruit it does produce is just so-so. I’d rank it at the bottom if comparing all the ribes. I usually let the birds have them because it’s barely worth my time to pick such a meagre harvest. My blacks and reds on the other hand I can barely keep up with. I’ll give my josta one more year to see if it can figure out how to make a decent harvest before I remove it.
I have grown jostaberries in sun and shade and find it an incredibly forgiving and useful plant. It’s the earliest bush to leaf out in winter/spring and the last to drop its leaves in late fall. The fruits appear on older wood in the interior of the bush, so it’s more protected from birds than other bushes’ fruits. I’ve mostly made wine and raisins from the fruits and I really enjoy the heavy, rather funky flavor - not as resinous as black currants, and not as sweet as my Black Velvet black gooseberries, but still quite satisfying to me, especially dried. The growth on the bush is crazy fast but for me that’s a boon - I trim the new growth off 3-4 times each summer and feed it to my rabbits and they eat all of it. I also grow the Orus 8 jostaberry and find that one almost indistinguishable from the Black Velvet gooseberry - very thorny, with fruit that also tastes more gooseberry than josta to me - but it has a more arching form than Black Velvet. Last year I planted both the Giant Jostaberry and the Red Jostaberry to compare them to the standard josta, but I know it will be several years before I’ll get to compare the fruit. I was surprised to learn that josta requires 800-1200 chill hours and I’m wondering if that’s actually accurate…anyone here grow them successfully in less than 800 chill hours?
I tried Jostaberry here zone 7b southern middle TN… in a morning sun location.
They could not hack it here… too hot ? too humid ? In 3 or 4 years I got 2 or 3 berries.
Early in the growing season they would get awefull foliage issues and drop leaves. It was so bad that they made no progress at all growing.
I yanked them.
I started 2 crandell clove currants last spring and they produced quite a few berries first season and grew well.
Also started a couple Jeanne goosberry… they put on some growth this season and kept their leaves all season. Perhaps I get some fruit next season.
TNHunter
I have one Jostaberry-bush, and this is the second year it has given me berries.
They taste awful.
Both the smell and taste remind me of wet cat food…
Not that I have ever eaten cat food 
The berries look almost identical to my black currants, but in comparison they have this additional horrible taste.
Gooseberries I like, black currants I tolerate. Jostaberries, no thank you…
I planted one jostaberry about four years ago in full sun zone 6B southern Indiana. It barely grew for the next couple of years, but I can’t blame the bush as I planted it right up on the asparagus and also neglected to weed and feed it.
I finally decided to dig it out of the mountain of weeds and asparagus it was being smothered by. I planted the little stick next to my house on the east side where it only gets sun until 1 or 2 pm, gave it good soil and nice mulch, and the little thing grew like gangbusters. It is now about 5 ft x 5 ft two years later. Last year it had a few berries which the birds beat me to. This summer it had quite a few more than last year, but still a sparse crop. I did get to taste some and I liked them. Pretty good size berries and sweet with a little tartness. I am hoping next year to have a bigger crop and get some netting in place in a timely manner.
I have planted some gooseberries and a current this spring, but have never tasted either fruit before, so I will have to wait and see if I like them better than jostaberries. I thought it was quite attractive as a shrub with its pretty shaped green leaves this summer. Most of its leaves were gone in mid-September as we had a pretty bad drought this summer and I did not give supplemental water to established shrubs. It has lots of buds of some type all over the branches. Looking forward to seeing what it will do next year.
Sandra
