Well, the last of the gooseberry crop has been picked. It was a reasonable year in terms of yield. The main gooseberry patches gave me their average which considering the year is just fine with me.  We were able to keep the area around them mowed a few times which helps but they need a solid clean up.

The area around the bushes need to be trimmed out and removed the top layer of nature grasses and other plants are pushing in to hard and we had to do some hand weeding in the plants which is not the ideal. Once that is pulled back, then the plants need a good layer of well done horse manure compost put down and when the time is right, I need to trim out a solid 1/3rd of the branches out and get better air flow in the bigger older plants.

I got a new Gooseberry bush two years ago and it did nothing last year but grow.. given it was a tiny little thing, that was fine with me.. but this year it did give a few fruit.. the size of these fruits was huge.

They are the size of grapes where as my normal ones which seem really small next to them are about the size of your thumb nail. I will very interested to see if they will continue to as large next year when hopefully they will produce a larger crop of berries. I need to trim this plant in regards to shaping and I am going to see if I can root out the trimmings and make a few more of these plants.

I love that gooseberries have enough nature pectin in them that you can just juice the berries, add your sugar, bring to boil and jar up and do a ten min water bath session and it will set up all on its own.

Do you grow gooseberries? Do you make Jelly or syrup with them? Do you ever take the time to top and tail them to use them in baking, I have to admit that I almost never do, make a thicker no skin jam or jelly or syrup are so much easier to do.  What is your favorite way to use them? What size is your gooseberries?