I have a couple golden currant bushes (Crandall) and on one of the bushes many of the fruits are turn brown and drying out. This bush is right next to another unaffected Crandall as well as some gooseberry and currant bushes, all without disease.
Any ideas?
Bump
Whatever it is, I wouldn’t let the affected fruit hit the ground.
2 Likes
Are the leaves fine?
1 Like
The leaves look completely normal, its only the fruit.
1 Like
Wonder if its Botrytis fruit rot, I know that noble rot in grapes shrivels them up without the outside fuzz, dunno if it hits currants though.
What about last frost? Could it have hit them? My neighbour has lost his black currant fruit in a similar way after ours. Unlike mine, his bushes are in full sun and free-standing. I’ve only lost about half of my josta berries.
Botrytis is visible as grey fuzz and affects whole branches.
Yep thats why i brought up noble rot, which is also Botrytis. Admittedly I’ve never seen it in person but several pics show just the shriveled grapes without the fuzz. But all we have to go on is an oddly cropped picture of a few fruit.
While I have the currant/gooseberry experts here, can anyone tell what the damage is on these berries. My brother asked me about it and I didn’t know…maybe rot of some sort. The later (red) pics look a bit like a boron deficiency. But I don’t think it starts with the spots.
From what he is seeing, there is a spot when it is green, then the damaged fruit quickly ripens and goes bad from the spot.
That tends to happen with insect damage. Once the skin is punctured it either rots or “ripens” on fastforward.
1 Like
Could it be wind DMG that makes them puncture themselves on thorns?
I’d rather expect that kind of wind to rip the fruit off, but it’s not impossible.
Looks like it is some sort of insect. He cut one open and there was a tiny little worm. It is on the seed in this pic. When I looked at the pic, I asked him if he was sure it wasn’t just part of the berry, but he said it was moving around a lot.
I only found two gooseberries at my house with punctures and premature ripening. I cut them open, but didn’t see anything. Maybe they were just mechanical damage. Or maybe a bit of over-spray from my fruit trees killed them…
1 Like