Leveller with maybe 10 days to go. It gets red dots on areas exposed to the sun. It should go from green to yellow.
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Since there are so many mis-identified gooseberry cultivars, one of my ambitions is to generate a spreadsheet of properties and images of the various cultivars. I found this checklist of properties of cultivars from a 2010 working group. Some of the included reference cultivars are not found in the USA but some are here. Anyway this is something I hope to do in the next few years to help fight the mis-identification of cultivars. People may find it interesting to read through the various descriptions of properties.
gooseberry-workinggroup.pdf (615.8 KB)
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My biggest complaint about gooseberries is that they get shredded by the gooseberry sawfly / European currant worm (Euura ribesii). I’m constantly squishing and spraying. I didn’t check one of my gooseberries out front for a few days and now look at it. They move fast!
I did have an invicta gooseberry plant but it didn’t come back after the second winter. The pictures above make me want to try it again.
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Oh wow that’s awful ! I’d be so upset if my plant looked like that 
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Sawflys are the worst! They can completely defoliate a bush in a couple days. I end up spraying every 10 days or so during April and May. I use Imidan which is supposedly one of the less toxic insecticides towards bees.
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I definitely agree with your assessment of Pixwell. I took it out the first year it fruited. Nothing has grown as well and produced as much as my Black Velvet and nice tasty berries About ten years now.
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Very nice method of trait descriptions. Just need to finish ot for reference on which variety is which.
First time ever this year I’ve had white wooly aphids on mine. They messed up the top 1/3 of the biggest new cane.
I didn’t know they jump too. I went to smash them and they would jump like the lantern fly nymphs !
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Besides the danger of thorns, I find birds enjoy nesting in my densely growing gooseberries. Maybe they see the thorns as protection?
I found this in the middle of a row of 5 bushes this morning when I was inspecting the fruit to see if I had enough to pick for a pie. It is at my community garden plot.
From the birds I saw nearby I believe this is a song sparrow nest. And I think the large egg is from a cowbird that drop their eggs off for other birds to take care of.
Now how much do I want that pie…?
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wow! im glad we dont have those here. other than some aphid damage all my Ribes have been disease/bug free.
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Well you got egg wash right there … 
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kids
my family all live in that area and apparently there was a big push at the schools telling kids to smush them. like every kid in PA went on a frenzy trying to smush the most or drown them in bottles, they had a class project to build traps they could “suction” them into a water bottle with.
my nephew went wild on them and from what I was told there were kids all over there, last summer and the year before, just murdering spotted lantern flies en masse.
I think the natural predator was bored kids
@EJh last year I had a massive aphid attack on my white gooseberries and all the fruitlets dropped from it. this year I sprayed it with the same dormant oil I was putting on my plums, to use the last of the stuff in the sprayer and because I figured it couldn’t hurt.
I also put out a bunch of lacewings and mantis and got aphid mites to release. I haven’t had any on that plant this year at all. might have done more than I had to but I’m just so sick of aphids specifically.
the plant only has maybe a dozen berries on it this year but it’s growing on up the porch side and I hope it gets long/tall enough to shade back that part of the porch
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So one of the berries on my “not black velvet” came off when I touched it so I gave it a try… And it was quite bland. The skin was tart, inside was sweet but very bland if that makes sense. Glendale blows it out of the water.
Bush is thornless, very upright. It set only about 6 berries in total which is surprising for it’s size. Canes aren’t very thick, and oddly it didn’t send up any canes from the base this spring. There’s a few more berries on it that I’m gonna let hang more to see if flavor improves, but it might get the shovel.
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I just picked my first ever gooseberry harvest and tasted my first gooseberry! I planted Pixwell and Hinnomaki Red late last spring on the east side of my house where they get afternoon shade and they seem to be growing very well and put some fruit on this year. It is not a huge amount but seems reasonable for only a year in the ground. I planted an Amish Red this spring, so hoping to taste it next summer.
Top photo is Pixwell, and bottom photo is Hinnomaki Red:
I did not like the Pixwell too much when it was pinkish, so I tried the greener, less ripe ones and liked them better, but I do like sour flavors. So I went ahead and picked all the berries, even those without pink. I also thought the lesser ripe Pixwell had a much better texture, more crisp. There were a few that were turning purple and they had a gross taste, almost like they were rotting.
The Hinnomaki Red tasted slightly better to me a bit underripe so I went ahead and picked all of those, too. I had read the skin would be sort of crisp and sour and the inside much sweeter, but I did not notice that at all. I was looking forward to that, so I was a bit disappointed.
Most of the berries were on only a couple of branches, so looking forward to a bigger harvest when most branches are fruiting, hopefully next year. The branches are definitely weepers, especially when laden with berries. I bought two stout tomato cages and am trying to train the branches up through the cages to keep them off the ground, but I should definitely have done it earlier this spring, not two days ago. Those thorny devils were fighting me every inch of the way!
Sandra
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I read that Hinn. Red can do something weird where some years they taste great and other years they are just ok.
Animals ate all my pixwell this year 
so didn’t get to try them. They were just fruitlets too!
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@EJh I hope that is the case. Maybe they will be different next year. They are very young.
I hate to hear that about critters eating your fruitlets. I have 3 indoor/outdoor cats who patrol along the edges of the house right where the gooseberries are planted. Even though the fruiting branches were almost right down on the ground, nothing ate them. I think the cats help a lot in keeping chipmunks and mice away!
Sandra
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I got nearly all the berries on my Glendale. Which I turned into probably 2oz of jam. (It taste amazing, it has like a clove/spicy finish) the berries on their own have a good taste too.
I’m going to my parents this weekend, so hopefully some of the black velvet and hinn. Yellow are still on the bushes for me to try. Otherwise next year!
My mom has tons and tons of animals in the yard that she feeds. So not too upset about the pixwell. Next year it should be loaded. Some of the canes it shot out are like 6 feet long and sprawling all over the place.
I’m most excited for the black currants next year out of everything. Hopefully get enough for a jar of jam and I’ll be very happy.
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Hey guys I’m new here 
I’ve been growing a few gooseberry bushes for just a couple years now, I see LOTS of good information here
Just gonna start off with a picture from last year of my invicta gooseberries, the only ones that gave fruit in their first year. I have others but of course I never actually kept track which was which except the two invicta ones xD
Oh yeah, I’m in Wisconsin 4b zone.
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They’re brutal. They seem to reproduce as fast as you can pick them off. With just a couple of gooseberry bushes you could spend the whole summer picking sawfly larvae. By the time one of them is big enough to see and remove, it’s already eaten a couple of leaves.
I love gooseberries, but don’t want to be forced to use insecticide…
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