What ever happened to gooseberries?

28 comments

1. I’ve got your ~~grandmother~~ gooseberries growing in my yard.

2. My gooseberries are fruiting like mad this year.

3. Anyone with an allotment or vegetable plot seems to grow them. My grandmother has a load of bushes and they’re covered in fruit.

4. Got a bush in the back garden if you want some. I’ve also seen them for sale in a few garden centres.

5. They all went into the Dowager Lady Ursula’s homemade gooseberry wine

6. My parents have bushes of them. There are some varieties that are less sour so are better to eat straight up.

   I think the main reason they’re not popular is tastes generally have become more sweet and gooseberries are notoriously sour so they’ve never taken off as a fruit people buy in the shops. But still commonly grown by gardeners

7. We’re going strawberry picking at a farm today where you can also pick gooseberries.

8. Our local greengrocers sells them. My other half brings home a punnet once a year and puts it in the freezer to then be binned 9 months later when we still haven’t eaten them and I don’t like them. 3 months later rinse and repeat.

9. They became geeseberries.

10. I adore gooseberries! I think they aren’t seen as trendy anymore so nobody really stocks them or sells them much. You just reminded me to get myself a bush now that I have a garden, thanks!

11. Just started growing them this year. The red plant one keeps trying to die 🙁

12. This post has really sent me back in time to picking the gooseberries at home as a little kid. Such a strange fruit but i always loved a nice gooseberry crumble and ice cream.

13. I always think, because of my dad, that gooseberries are from an allotment in the 1970’s. I think he grew them as a bit of a tradition, can’t be any other reason as none of my family liked them.

    However, to keep the tradition alive, I have two gooseberry bushes, in pots, in my garden.

14. I suppose tastes have changed but, having been a proud gooseberry bush owner myself, brambles sldo seem to grow a lot quicker so I assume they’ve been crowded out somewhat.

15. Gooseberries are really common for people who grow their own. We have 5 gooseberry bushes and honestly I hate the stabby little bastards, love the fruit, hate picking it.

    Its bloody painful, its coming up to picking time in the next few weeks and I’m dreading it. I usually put it off for as long as I can. Then I have to spend hours preserving the fruit, either cleaning& freezing, jams or just a fruit compote.

16. I wanted to grow some as they’re a blast from my childhood, but my bush appears to have picked up a fungus, so I have a very small, scabby looking harvest ahead of me. I’ve not had a good year for Ribes at all…

17. My mum used to grow them when I was young. I didn’t like them though as I wasn’t keen on the taste and I had to pick them and the thorns were horrible.

    Not seen them in years though so you have a good point. Going to see if I can find some Gooseberry jam and see if my tastes have changed.

18. That is a correlation. The question is, is there also causation, and if so did your grandmother eat all the gooseberries or did the gooseberries eat your grandmother?

19. My gooseberry bush was devastated by sawfly, who stripped the leaves from it in about a day and killed the poor thing completely dead

20. Used to have a whole row of 20-30 goose & wild raspberries, saw-fly caterpillars went through them in the space of 2 weeks, never recovered.

21. Nothing happened to them, people just don’t eat much. Same with Rhubarb. Very easy to grow but hard to make a profit because demand is low.

22. They mostly went into gooseberry and cinnamon yoghurt. u/Important_Ad716 would you like a gooseberry and cinnamon yoghurt?

23. I too was upset about gooseberries being less popular than other fruits, but I suppose that’s just sour grapes.

24. Slightly unrelated, but gooseberry ice cream is the tits.

25. I planted a few bushes in the lockdown.

    Gooseberry sawflies ate every leaf on them.

    This year they didn’t turn up, and I got a whole three berries.

26. They don’t build houses with a big enough garden to have anything fancy like gooseberry bushes anymore.

27. I’m drinking a home made gooseberry smoothie right now. It must be consumer tastes. Rhubarb, black currents, black berries all amazing but people probably more familiar with non native fruits

28. My great aunt grows them on her allotment and makes jam every year. Like a lot. Like enough for everyone in the UK.