Oldest gooseberry bush

I've just been out to check on my oldest surviving gooseberry plant. It's so heavily laden with fruit, that it's flattened out and most of the branches are laying if not curving down to lay on the ground. I need to do something about this, maybe thin out the fruit, or put some netting around it to hold up the branches, as it would be nice to get all that fruit.

Maybe also put bird netting around it. Though I did that last year, and a starling got in and ate all the fruit anyway.  However, that netting was old grape netting and has the odd hole.

I took cuttings from this in the Autumn, none of them survived.  The cuttings I had both from my other gooseberry plants, and received from other kind souls, all lived.   Not sure why that was.

Invicta Gooseberry

Cuttings and rooted canes

Yesterday, while pulling up the boysenberry canes from under the grass, and  staking them up in a poor mans trellis, I managed to break a few of the canes.  Noticing that they had white roots, I decided to try and pot them for later replanting.

Behind the boysenberry, are two planter bags of cuttings of what I believe to be heritage "Gabrier's Gully Gold Field" gooseberry that someone went out and retrieved.  Named for the location, rather than any particular variety.  And behind that are two more planter bags of Invicta gooseberry cuttings.

Invicta gooseberry in Spring 2015

This is the sole surviving gooseberry as of the start of Spring.

Gooseberry var. Invicta

And here it is approximately 40 days later, and it's looking pretty good so far.  Last year I was too lazy to cover it with bird netting, and one day the fruit were there and the next they weren't.  Was it the free ranging chickens?  Was it the birds?  Did they just fall off unnoticed?  No idea! An interesting contrast was the Chilean guava, which has delicious fruit, yet nothing ate them.

Gooseberry var. Invicta

I originally planted two. Where did the second one go? I don't know. Maybe the stoats, possums and/or rabbits ate every inch of it.

Rooting Cuttings

I planted out half of one of the backyard raised beds with cuttings. I even recycled old plastic bags I had tucked away, and made it look nice and tidy.

Part was chilean guava cuttings.

Part was box hedge cuttings.

Unfortunately, the chickens have recently taken to scratching out this bed. The black plastic is in disarray and the cuttings are all dislodged and strewn everywhere. Never trust anyone who tells you that the chickens will magically not get anywhere you don't want them, and will listen when you tell them to scoot and stay away from something! Lies! Even if you rolled your eyes and didn't believe them, you still should have put netting over whatever it was. Two words: chicken enchiladas.

Planting & Rooting

This is a collection of recent things I have either planted out, or planted out to root for later transplanting.

Two fruit plants were donated to me, as they were not growing well in town. This is a Fantasia nectarine tree, a variety I already have one of. At worst, it's a backup tree, should the other cark it. It could also be used for grafting.

The other donation, was this blueberry. It's planted out alongside my other two varieties, one of which is Climax, and the other is Powder Blue. This variety of this new plant has been mislaid and will never be known.

I also traded a lot of cuttings and seeds online, and got two varieties of gooseberry. These were from plants themselves raised from cuttings, where the cuttings were from old farms or gold fields, in another part of the country. They should be older varieties, where most of the modern plants available are Pax and Invicta. I've got one Invicta out in my berry orchard. These are sitting in front of my north bed, which the elephant garlic cloves were planted out in.

Last year, I took cuttings from someone else's currant prunings. These I dipped in rooting hormone, and planted in a garden bed. And this year, given they grew roots in the garden bed, I transplanted them out in the field beside my purchased Magnus plant. I've also got a Cotswold Cross, an unknown red currant and a white currant. It just goes to show how easy it is to make your own plants, if you're willing to wait a year and have a source for genetic material to work from.

This year, I've got some gooseberry cuttings and black currant cuttings, which I've taken from someone else's prunings. The gooseberry are a thornless variety, and haven't had a problem with mildew. So not Invicta. The currants are likely Magnus again. Something I read, likely a fruit book I bought, recommended the black plastic to keep weeds down.

I also took two cuttings off my white currant, and have planted them out. But not photo. With a bit of luck, this will give me two more white currant plants next year. I should go out and see if I can get cuttings off the red currant. And for that matter, the Chilean cranberry. Hmm.

"Invicta" gooseberry

I grew up with plums and gooseberries. We had a huge plum tree at home, down the back of the yard. And my grandparents basically ate gooseberries one way, which was stewed. I think they sourced them from some other relative, who had a bush we used to pick at, when we would go visiting on school holidays. There's no occasion I've ever been in a New Zealand shop and seen gooseberries for sale.

Looking for a gooseberry plant at a local nursery and I was told about how all the varieties of gooseberries we have here aren't doing so well here because of mildew. And how the one which is perhaps mostly resistant to mildew, is the American variety called "Invicta". Also, this variety is supposedly a new one, and as such is under protection so that you're not supposed to take cuttings or grow and sell the plants yourself.

The front of the label.

The back of the label.

In this case, two cuttings were taken from the plant in the next photo. These can be seen if you look hard enough. They seem to be taking okay, and have small amounts of green growth. I suspect the rules that protect someone who has developed a new variety, are more intended to protect against other commercial selling, not people pottering around in their own garden.

The planted bush, and two cuttings.