Pruning gooseberry into a small tree?

General Fruit Growing
1

Is it possible to prune a gooseberry into a 2 branched tree? I have a Pixwell and Red Hinnomaki and they just feel too low to the ground for easy harvest. They’re about 3x3. I’m wondering if I can prune all the branches (currently 12, 6 are 2 year old and 6 are 1 year) back to 1 or 2 branches with hopes that these branches will sprout their own branches and make a tree? Is this possible or do these only sprout from the base?

2 Likes
2

Not likely to work.
Unless, possibly, they could be grafted to a standard. (A tall stem of something that they might could be grafted to…I don’t have any ideas what would be compatible though.)

3

I have pruned them to be more upright, like a small tree.
They don’t really like that, for long, and need new wood.
So must be renewed every 3-4 yrs.

I did have a row for a while ,of gooseberry grafted high on josta berry, tied to a trellis , that looked like little trees.
Worked ok for a few years. Then they declined for some reason

3 Likes
4

I was looking into growing gooseberries as a standard (saw a picture, thought it looked cool). Here are a couple of links (scroll down for relevant info):

https://www.chrisbowers.co.uk/article/gooseberries-cordons-standards/

https://www.gardenfocused.co.uk/fruitarticles/gooseberries-grow.php

This one suggests grafting to ribes aureum:

Haven’t tried it myself (yet), but the links may give you some ideas.

5 Likes
5

Thank you for sharing. I had not seen the gardenfocused.co.uk article before. It provides some instruction on how you could go about creating a standard form. I’ve been wanting to try this too.

6

You could also try training them as cordons. This is the route I’m probably going to take, just to maximize space.

Also, check out the picture of the espalier-style currant cordon that Lee Reich grew:

1 Like
7

Just a note on terms-- what McKay is calling cordon, while technically correct, could more clearly be called columnar style. Reich’s espalier could also be called cordon (the more traditional, horizontal style). It’s sometimes helpful to differentiate between cane-cordon and spur-cordon but that’s more a grapevine thing.

But thanks for sharing, gooseberries are something I’m considering adding. Soon as I actually taste one.

1 Like