This is my Jeanne, growing from the ground up again because of the damn rabbits last winter. Looks to have a similar grow habit as the Hinnomaki yellow, prostrate and spreading instead of upright. It also has thorns. Mine came from Fruit wood Nursery.
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my jeanne has very low thorns but does have thorns
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My Jeanne came from honeyberries as well. Its growth habit is dropping, sprawling, and it has large thorns. It set only a few berries for me this year, which are small and just starting to turn pink.
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Interesting about Jeanne being prostrate for others too. Mine sprawls a lot, I kept thinking it was just my soil but sounds like that’s just how it grows. Still my most productive by a decent margin so I’m not complaining, just means more time on hands and knees at harvest.
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I live in a particularly humid location in the humid region- southern NY, where many gooseberries tend to be stunted by mildew. I did lots of experiments with gooseberries and currants when I first got my property here 35 years ago and Invicta was a rare one to survive that also has good flavor. Not just at my site either, mildew is a real problem with many ribes varieties in my general region. Another I liked was a flat-out hybrid of gooseberry and black currant- jostaberry.
Once my tree fruit began bearing serious crops, I lost interest in all my small fruit besides black currants and blueberries. Blueberries I eat mostly frozen and black currants for culinary use. I like blueberries fresh, but have them every morning with my breakfast out of my freezer when my plants aren’t holding fresh ones. The fresh ones will start in about a week and be over in August..
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@xendula @iowacity @Joao thanks for confirming how yours grow.
This is it. Has one upright shoot and the rest is flopped being held up by the fence and the other plants. And picture of the substantial thorns.
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Most varieties are going to flop like that when they are young. After they are older and bigger the flop will not reach the ground. Black Velvet is the only upright one I have seen.
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@Eme When I saw those thorns I actually thought about Black Velvet. It has some pretty harsh thorns and they point backwards (towards the roots, not toward the growth tips) a bit, which makes it pretty painful when you reach in to get weeds out, pick fruit, etc. My BV is the only one that has dieback from something and isn’t doing great and I won’t replace it if it goes - too many painful memories.
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Jahn’s Prairie are shaped like that.
I have a few Jeanne bushes, not very fast growing at all but once the damn looper worm things go away they seem to make a little progress at least, I even have one that is growing a whole new cane. No berries yet but I have plenty from my other regular bushes xD
Also no thorns to speak of really, just tiny hairs here and there, these have been growing for… I think two years now.
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Also I’ve been wondering what exactly this bush is… For context the berries last year were super small and very dark purple, this year they seem to be a fair amount larger but still small. I have like 2 of them, the bushes are insanely wild looking and I’m pretty sure they’ve self layered and now starting new bushes… considering possibly removing them if the fruit is meh again. Of course I bought… I bought these two particular ones I think from Jungseed or… somewhere else, come to think of it I have another one elsewhere too and that one is growing new shoots nearby it as well… O_o I’ll give it a try but I’m slightly annoyed that I don’t know what they are lol.
The only ones I know exactly what they are, are the ones I planted this year and the invicta bushes that are somewhat older but still smaller in overall bush size, and honestly those are the largest of the gooseberries I have managed to grow so far.
edit I’m suspecting very much that these are black velvet… or hell these could be pixwell, I didn’t even expect those could become that dark in color, ah well. still going to prune the living hell out of all of them to avoid whatever hell they’re trying to unleash xD
Also Heere is the invicta berries below, they’re freaking power houses xD
And the two I have look to be growing some new canes, was resisting pruning them since it’d only been a couple years but I’ll probably have to, last year they were so heavy with berries the largest canes were all the way to the ground.
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That’s totally different from mine and the other similar descriptions. Yours looks like what I expected.
Some fruit pics…
Poorman still not ripe on the bush, BV on my palm, ORUS8 by my fingers.
None are completely ripe yet, but Hinno Red, ORUS8, BV, and Amish Red. Size seems somewhat variable in general with younger bushes that get more shade having slightly smaller berries on average.
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How does orus8 taste? Is the currant taste present?
My orus 8 produces small berries that are very good, with a flavor halfway between black currant and gooseberry.
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Your top picture looks like a native Golden Currant.
This one looks like a jostaberry to me rather than a gooseberry.
I kind of want to describe it as a “brown” taste. It’s like a milder spectrum gooseberry with sort of the musk of raw black currant without the piney-ness or the cheese funk. Pleasant, but they are pretty small.
I moved my OG ORUS8 bush to the front yard this year (it gets sun from sunrise to between noon and 2, I think) and cut it back quite a bit. So it’s not as loaded up as it was last year.
First time I’ve tried to imagine what brown tastes like. Too funny. Thanks
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