I’ll try to ask in the morning.
yeah ive never heard of pure gooseberry bushes getting over 5ft. here. id guess its a natural hybrid like Oscar said.
It doesn’t have any thorns.
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does not look like a gooseberry to me. (they usually don’t have berry’s in racemes (bunch like grapes, or redcurrants)
But spread out over the twig (more like apples)
Probably from the ribes family. But not a josta either.
If id have to gues i’d say a wild ribes or a hybrid.
could be
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yep. my guess too. looks just like my Crandall clove foliage/ bark. goldens can be yellow, red or purple fruited. those look like they will be yellow. i had some but they were WPBR magnets so i got rid of them. bush that big should produce alot of fruit. if its good tasting it would be worth rooting some cuttings of it. nice find.
How do you know when you have a real “sport” of if you just have some other fluke on a limb? I have a plum tree that is quite large and has almost no fruit on the entire tree, except for one limb. That limb is loaded beyond belief. ITs crazy. So you have this almost empty tree that is 10 ft tall and 8 foot across and has maybe 10 plums on the entire tree except one limb toward the top which probably has 70 plumbs smashed together all over it. Now, perhaps the wind carried one big load of pollen to those flowers, maybe there was something that drew insect pollinators to that area, I just cannot figure it out. Or maybe there is some genetic fluke that makes that limb far more fertile or self-fertile while the rest of the tree isn’t? I can’t think of any reason why fruit would be so concentrated in one small area while the rest of the tree is fairly empty??? Beats me. Open to ideas and thoughts. I guess all I can do is wait until next year and see if the same thing happens again?
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Or you could try adding a couple grafts from that branch elsewhere and see if they become the only other branches to become loaded as well.
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It looks exactly like my Crandalls blackcurrant
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This is a big plus. I always want to have a Crandall for its aromatic blossoms. tried several times, but never had one survived or rooted
i think the “proper way” to be sure, is to graft a statistically significant amount of tree’s. (like maybe 50) half with the suspected sport, and half with the non sport buds. And compare those over the coming years. Ideally planted in randomized blind block planting.
This does not seem feesable. And probably knowing for 99% sure that it’s a sport isen’t needed in a home orchard enviroment. So i would just graft 3 scions/buds of the non sport on the same tree, and on similar spots graft 3 scions/buds of the suspected sport. And compare those next years.
There are multiple non genetic reasons that could explain the discribed effect though. However i would find it worthwhile to graft a few of the possible sport branch.
That is a very good idea! I have great luck with plum grafts taking, so I can graft not only to different places on the same tree, but also trees located elsewhere in my orchard. Then if I continue to get huge loads from the grafts from that limb no matter where I put it, then I’ll know I really have something. The sad thing is I don’t know what kind of plum this is, so even it turns out that I have a good sport, I won’t know what its a sport OF. But they are wonderful tasting, small, sweet plums. Who wouldn’t want those traits combined with heavy fruiting!
I was typing my response to @Brace at the same time you were posting your response, but the good news is that all 3 of us seem to be on the same path. And I agree that lot of non-genetic reasons could cause this and probably are more likely than a true sport. I mentioned 2 such possibilities in my OP but I can think of a few more. WHile I won’t be doing 50 grafts, I do think I’ll put a few sticks from the productive limb all around my orchard and see if they behave the same. Although, the easiest solution and one I may well employ is to just wait at least one more year and see if the productive limb does the same thing next year. If so, it would be worth doing some test grafts I suppose. I’m curious why you think a sport wouldn’t be useful in a home orchard environment? I mean, if it turns out that I have a great tasting plum that is a low producer, and suddenly it mutates into a great tasting plum that is a very heavy producer, who wouldn’t want that home or commercial I would think a tree that produces very well would be better than one that doesn’t- especially if taste and size is the same as it is on this limb.
the 1st one i put in died. this one didnt but its a very slow grower compared to other Ribes and is hard to root from cuttings. ive heard of others that had them up and die for no reason.
I never said a sport isn’t useful in a home orchard environment. I just said that you likely don’t need a really high certainty that your sport is different in a home orchard environment.
In science you have to weigh the amount of resources and effort researching something takes against the value of extra precision on the thing your trying to quantify or find out.
Think of it this way, your rooting 50 cuttings a year of a certain plant. and you wanna find out if soil mix A or B gives better rooting.
You could do an experiment to get 99.9% certainty on which soil mix (A or B) is better. But for this you likely need to experiment with a 1000 cuttings. But going through the effort of making and documenting a 1000 cuttings to get a few % better takes on something you only make 50 off a year, that’s a waste.
Or you could try and root 30 in mix A and 30 in mix B and see what works better. There is a decent chance the mixture that was best was best by accident. But the amount of resources spent on finding out was proportional to the value of the information.
Same here, if you want a high certainty your “sport” is actually different and how it’s different from the mother tree. Your gonna have to spend a lot of effort. This effort and certainty is needed if your gonna apply for patents and plan to roll out your sport commercially by making millions of tree’s with it. It however is not needed in a home orchard environment.
Thanks Steve, you made me feel better now. I am not good at rooting things. Couldn’t get Crandall currant to root, I thought it was my issues. Well I’d still like to try to root it again sometime if I got chance.
if you remind me early next spring, i can root a branch for you by burying it and putting a rock on it. by the end of the summer it will have its own roots.
Steve thanks very kind of you. Could you lay a branch down now trying to root? Or it’s not the right season?
it needs the whole summer to root well. if i start in may it will be ready to dig by late aug. my other Ribes would take a couple weeks max. if any of my other Ribes even touch my mulch they send roots right through into the soil.
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How many ever bearing raspberry canes would you need to be able to pick a large pies worth of raspberries each day? Based off of my red raspberry with several canes fruiting, I figure I will need around 200 canes for such quantities, as I am only getting a few ripe enough for picking each day. Does this sound right?