Grafting Ribes

are gooseberries commonly grafted onto golden currant?

all Ribes are easy to root from cuttings. if your ground isn’t frozen, stick some cuttings where you want bushes and likely by spring they will have rooted and take off growing. take a knife and scratch the cambium around the bottom of the cutting. stick in leaving 2 buds above ground, then mulch. welcome to the forum.

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hi thanks for the welcome and tips i have lots of ribes there one of my favourite genus i only really asked as my gooseberry’s rootstock when i purchased was a golden currant and i just wondered if this was common practice the rootstock send up suckers and the gooseberry actually died back lol and i have loads of them cloned and was wondering if grafting my other currants and gooseberry’s onto these suckers is a good idea as they aren’t the tastiest or the prettiest

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did some googling found “brechts erflog” a cultivar of golden currant which is often used for rootstock i see also people say it’s common in poland do you think i should graft onto this as i assume it’s the one i have ?or just clone my other currants i’ve got a lot ,black ,red worcesterberry around 10 or so so i just wonder if some root system not as strong and grafting better option

ive never tried grafting them but i bet they would be easy to. but it’s equally as easy to root a cutting. totally up to you.

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I would rather have something on its own roots. Especially when it’s super easy to root, so I don’t see why they would be grafting especially since they need pruned to stay productive.

Maybe it causes a different type of growth habit possibly?

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this summer will try both will just root some cuttings and then i’ll graft and show the difference on here. every single golden currant i’ve tried to clone has worked very well much better then my other plants however haven’t tested many other ribes

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dont know where you are but golden currant here is a disease magnet. black, red or white currant doesnt suffer from any disease.

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in england i have two golden currants one which was a rootsock which sent the suckers which i was talking about and has been alive for 3 ish years it was half gooseberry half golden currant for a while till gooseberry snapped of lol but it’s never had any issues with disease and my other golden currant is a ornamental variety not sure which exactly i only got that this year as a bareroot so not to sure how disease resistant that is yet

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I did not have to even bother taking cuttings! One Autumn I was lax in cleaning out the leaves that blew in around my Hinomaki red gooseberry. The following Spring when pruning this plant, I found all low branches that hit the ground and got covered with leaves had all rooted in!

I filled a pail with rooted branch tips that I gave away. Some were quite heavily rooted. Those who got them had great success rate with them surviving. Nice when nature provides me with free plants.

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i have the same variety so that’s a good thing to hear :grin:

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that’s another great way to get free plants. left unpruned any Ribes could form a thicket this way. i try and give mine away but ive thrown alot away as well. my Jeanne gooseberry needs to be trellised as it has so much fruit, it lays the canes all over the ground and roots.

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I’m hoping for that problem eventually

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Just to give my 5 cents.
I do my ribes cuttings at the end of the winter, not during the summer and it works very well (more than 80% of success on average).
I don’t do any fanzy stuff anymore. I works too well. Instead I make sure to have enough space between each cuttings since very few will not make it.
Like Steve mentioned, 2 buds above ground. I cut it to have around the same size or a bit smaller bellow the surface. And I put this into the ground without anything further work.
This very easy way enable me to lose very little time by doing those cuttings. Cuttings that I do while pruning the bushes (in late winter like previously mentioned). Last year I was surprised by a very early warm period during the winter and even with buds starting to open, the cuttings worked nicely.
When I have through like “why are there no vegetables that are very good and as easy to propagate as all these bad weeds”, Ribes always comes to mind. Such a nice family. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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i started off with a tiben black currant. i liked the fruit so much i took a bunch of cuttings from it and stuck them all over the yard . 23 total. every one rooted. i had to go back and pull half of them. now i get so much fruit i let half of it rot.

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i put my cuttings in the ground just before the ground freezes in fall and i get almost 100% success. i only get about 70-80% if i do it in early spring.

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Ohh interesting. :ok_hand:

I have never got a gooseberry to root. Currants and jostas, no problem. What do you do?

nothing . they just root when they touch the ground. i stick cuttings in the ground the same as other Ribes.

I’ve been potting them up, perhaps too much effort is my downfall.