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Gooseberry 101: Facts | Benefits | Looks | Taste & More!
Gooseberry is a delicious, versatile summer berry that, in my opinion, tastes absolutely best eaten in the sun, straight from the bush.
Although, in the section about what gooseberries taste like, I also cover some of my other favorite ways of enjoying them. Ways that’ll put a smile on anyone's face.
As a tribute to this wonderful berry we’ve put together this massive article. If you’re after something specific I suggest you use our table of contents just below this intro to jump to the section you’re interested in and bookmark it as a reference for future gooseberry adventures.
Gooseberry is a close relative to the currant. They belong to the same genus: Ribes. The berries are edible and very tasty.
But gooseberries are not only delicious, they are also full of nutrients! The berries contain a lot of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.
Gooseberries also have a remarkably high content of the antioxidant quercetin.
Everyone in my family loves to go out in the garden in the summer and eat the berries straight from the bush.
When the berries are ripe, they're soft and taste sweet. The unripe ones are much harder and taste sour. The unripe berries are perfect to make jam or marmalade of.
If you lack the possibility to pick some of your own but want to try out gooseberries I recommend you get some real European gooseberries or why not try a canned variety? Both are available on Amazon.
You can find these and many more products in our gooseberry product recommendation page if you want to explore the fantastic flavors of gooseberries yourself.
Table of Contents
Are Gooseberries Good For You?
Yes! Gooseberries contain a lot of nutrients that might have great health benefits for you.
Vitamins, minerals and antioxidants are plentiful in Gooseberries but what really sets it apart from other berries is its high content of the antioxidant quercetin.
Gooseberries are rich in both magnesium and potassium, which are needed for your muscles and cells to function normally.
The berries might also be able to help lower your blood pressure.
Gooseberries and the antioxidant quercetin
Gooseberries contain large amounts of the super-useful antioxidant quercetin which, among other things, acts anti-inflammatory and is said to help protect against heart disease and cancer.
Gooseberries are believed to be a natural help against allergies.
This is because gooseberries contain a lot of quercetin.
Quercetin does not only have anti-inflammatory properties but also contains antihistamines that lessen the effects of allergies, such as hay fever.
University of Kuopio in Finland published a study in Food Research International 32 “Screening of selected favonoids and phenolic acids in 19 berries”.
Selected favonoids kaempferol, quercetin, myricetin and phenolic acids were simultaneously detected from 19 berries using the High Performance Liquid Chromatographic (HPLC) ◳ method.
These phenolics is believed to, according to the study results, to have beneficial effects on health as antioxidants and anticarcinogens.
The results show that in the genus Ribes, quercetin was the main compound in gooseberry, red currant and black currant.
Gooseberries contain a lot of Vitamin C
A serving of gooseberries contains a lot of vitamin C, about 55% of a female’s recommended daily intake and 46% for a male’s recommended daily intake. It also has high levels of calcium. Gooseberries also contain mineral salts, antioxidants, iron, organic acids and vitamins A, B, C.
During 2010 the Swedish National Food Administration analyzed berries ◳ to update the food database with nutritional values.
Vitamin C, folate, vitamin K and carotenoids were analyzed in strawberry, raspberry, chokeberry, sour cherry, sweet cherry, blueberry, lingonberry, gooseberry, black, red and white currants, and sea buckthorn.
Most analyzed berries were classified as sources of vitamin C. Many of the berries also had a high content of carotenoids.
I recommend you read more about this amazing berry in our article where we go through all the benefits of eating Gooseberries daily.
Are Gooseberries Poisonous?
Gooseberries are not poisonous, the berries are safe to eat.
We’ve not found any reports or evidence that says otherwise.
And if they were then we would have known personally as our entire family love these berries...
You should however be careful and not overeat gooseberry leaves.
All gooseberry plants have thorns to some degree, but none have been reported as poisonous.
Even though they can scratch you, gooseberry thorns aren’t poisonous.
But if you are unlucky, tiny bits of plant matter can end up lodged in the wound and cause swelling, pain and a condition known as plant thorn arthritis that may be mistaken for poisoning and could require medical treatment.
When picking gooseberries you should wear gloves for protection against the sharp thorns.
Consuming gooseberry leaves
The leaves from the gooseberry bush are something that you need to be a bit careful with.
The fresh leaves contain small amounts of hydrogen cyanide, which is also found in for instance oxel seeds, flax seeds and apple kernels.
You can eat them in a salad or make a delicious tea of them, but you shouldn’t eat too much of the leaves.
Gooseberry leaves tea
You can make a tea of gooseberry leaves that tastes fantastic!
That's, in my opinion, both a tasty and great way to get more of that gooseberry goodness during a season.
It's really easy to make!
Here's my easy gooseberry tea recipe made from fresh leaves
- Put some fresh leaves in a cup
- Pour on boiling water
- Let it simmer for a while (2-3 min)
- Strain out the leaves
- Add a touch of squeezed lemon or lime
- Enjoy a delicious and aromatic cup of tea!
I recommend you vary the time you let it simmer and also the amount of lemon you add to your liking.
Can You Eat Gooseberries Raw?
Gooseberries are not only edible, they are delicious and healthy for you!
You can enjoy them raw, as they are, straight from the bush.
You can also make jam or a delicious cream of the berries.
They can also be used as an ingredient in desserts, such as pies and crumbles.
If you pick the berries early they are generally sour and more appropriate for culinary use. If the berries ripen on the bush, they become softer and sweeter.
When it comes to personal preference I think that gooseberries are at their best when you eat them sun-warm, fresh and ripe straight from the bush.
Unripe gooseberries contain more pectin
Unripe gooseberries have a higher content of pectin than the ripe berries.
This makes the unripe ones perfect to make jam of.
They can also be good to mix with other berries or fruits in jam or marmalade.
We use pectin to thicken jam or marmalade.
So if you make jam from the unripe berries, you don't need to add thickeners.
When the berries ripen, the pectin loses its elasticity to keep the berries hard and firm.
So, as the pectin disappears the berries become more and more soft.
We've carefully selected, among other things, a gooseberry jam to recommend from a Swedish brand #ad that’s light on the sugar and heavy on gooseberries.
Gooseberry jam is perfect with yoghurt, pancakes, waffles, scones or toast.
You can read more about it and other products we recommend that are made from Gooseberries in our page named Gooseberries (What & Where To Buy) - Top Recommendations.
Gooseberries in preserves or canned
Gooseberries can be preserved in the form of dried fruit, as the primary or a secondary ingredient in pickling, or stored in sugar syrup.
Gooseberries can also be used to flavor beverages such as sodas, flavored waters, and can be made into fruit wines and teas.
Fresh gooseberries are well suited for freezing
Gooseberries are very suitable for freezing immediately after picking.
Being able to make a warm gooseberry cream in the middle of winter is wonderful!
I was amazed when I found frozen gooseberries #ad for sale online!
I wholeheartedly recommend it if you aren't able to get fresh berries.
Gooseberry cream
Historically gooseberry cream has been a very common food in Scandinavia. It was often the base of a meal, especially during the summer. Before sugar became common, gooseberries were often stored in bottles of water.
Even the leaves of gooseberry are edible but don't over eat them
Even the leaves from the gooseberry can be used. Young leaves from the gooseberry bush can be eaten raw and used in a salad. But you need to be a bit careful because the fresh leaves from the gooseberry bush contain hydrogen cyanide, which is harmful in large quantities. Do not eat large amounts of gooseberry leaves!
What Do Gooseberries Taste Like?
Gooseberries can be eaten in many different forms.
You can eat them raw as they are or in a salad, you can eat them cooked in a jam or a pie or dried or canned.
The taste varies some of course depending on what’s been added or how they’ve been prepared.
What do raw gooseberries taste like?
Raw, ripe gooseberries are soft and sweet.
They almost melt in your mouth.
The sweet taste can be described as a mixture of sweet melon, kiwi, vanilla and fresh cucumber. You have to try it!
Some describe the taste of gooseberries as more like sour grapes.
I feel a bit sorry for those that have never tasted ripe gooseberries because if the berry is sour, you’ve picked an unripe one, and you're better off not eating them raw.
Unripe gooseberries are sour and work great for making jam out of.
There’s mainly two good reasons why I choose unripe gooseberries when making gooseberry jam
- They have a high pektin content compared to the ripe ones
- The sourness works great to balance out the sugar you add to the jam
I don’t like my jam too sweet so gooseberries are one of my favorite berries to make jam out of.
There is another alternative if you happen to stumble over a very sour gooseberry.
That is that you’ve actually not eaten a gooseberry but an Amla.
Amlas is also known as the Indian gooseberry.
They are not related, they just share a name. Amla is very, very sour.
But that sourness comes from it’s absolutely extremely high content of vitamin C.
We’ve written an article about the health benefits of eating gooseberries every day where we also cover Amla in more detail. I recommend you read it if you’re interested!
What do dried gooseberries taste like?
Dried gooseberries somewhat resemble raisins.
The sweet taste that you find in the fresh gooseberry is also present in the dried berry.
But it's not as sweet as the fresh berry.
The flavors are reduced somewhat in the drying process.
Still, I’d choose dried gooseberries over raisins any day of the week.
Dried gooseberries are not very easy to come by, but if you have fresh ones, you can dry them yourself, further down in this article you can read how you dry gooseberries yourself.
What does gooseberry jam taste like?
Gooseberry jam often tastes sweet with a hint of tartness.
That depends on how much added sugar the jam contains and of course of the ripeness of the gooseberries used.
The best gooseberries to make jam out of, are the unripe ones. They give the jam that tart flavor, which in my opinion is delicious.
But if the jam maker added lots of sugar the tartness disappears. In my opinion, that makes the jam too sweet. I like to have that tartness and sweetness together.
Gooseberry jam goes perfect on a piece of toast.
But, let me tell you about my absolute favorite way of eating gooseberry jam. Slightly warmed up, just a few seconds in the microwave, together with vanilla ice cream. It’s like eating a piece of heaven in every bite!
What do canned gooseberries taste like?
Canned gooseberries are very practical, but maybe not the best alternative if you’re after the taste of fresh gooseberries.
The gooseberry taste is there for sure but it’s not one of my favorites. Although as with the jam, try warming them some and then eating them with ice cream or perhaps with cream and waffles.
Not the healthiest choice, so don’t eat it every day, but once in a while, we enjoy it as a treat.
Usually you don't eat the canned berries as they are, but they work wonders in a pie or cobbler.
When gooseberries are canned they can get more tart than sweet.
To compensate producers often put the gooseberries in some kind of syrup.
That makes the berries soft and sweet.
I'm not a fan of added sugar, but if you can't get a hold of fresh gooseberries, canned ones are a good alternative.
Dried Gooseberry Benefits
If you have a hard time getting hold of fresh gooseberries, there is a perfect alternative; Dried gooseberries!
Dried berries of all kinds have grown in popularity in recent years.
Dried berries have a lot of advantages over frozen or powdered berries, for instance, they are really tasty, contain most if not all of the nutrients of the fresh berry, easy-to-go snack and have a long shelf life.
Dry gooseberries yourself
You can dry gooseberries yourself.
The dehydrating process for gooseberries is relatively simple, you can use a food dehydrator or your kitchen oven.
Below, under the headline "how to store gooseberries" you can find out how you can dehydrate your gooseberries in your kitchen oven.
The Botanical Name Of Gooseberry
The gooseberry which is native to Europe, northwestern Africa, and southwestern Asia, is called Ribes Uva-Crispa.
The North American gooseberry that is native to Canada and the northeastern and north-central United States, is called Ribes Hirtellum.
Gooseberry is a species of Ribes. The genus Ribes also include currants and several hybrid varieties.
The scientific name comes from the Latin uva, which means grape and crispus which means rippled.
The bush has berries and rippled leaves.
The gooseberry Ribes Hirtellum is also known as American gooseberry, hairy-stem gooseberry, hairy gooseberry, and wedge-leaf gooseberry.
Different Kinds Of Gooseberries
To make matters more complicated you can find three more fruits that have the name gooseberry, but despite their names, they are not botanically related to the small European gooseberry we describe in this article.
- Chinese gooseberry, also known as Kiwifruit.
- Cape gooseberry, also known as Goldenberries or Physalis peruviana or just Physalis
- Indian gooseberry, also known as Amla.
These four different gooseberries are nothing alike.
They differ from each other by the time of maturation, taste, color, size, shape of the fruit and how it is consumed.
They are completely different fruits, the only thing that binds them together is the name “Gooseberry”.
If you like some more information about these different kinds of “Gooseberries”, I suggest you read our article What are the benefits of eating gooseberries daily? In that article we look closer at the 4 name-relatives of gooseberries from a health perspective.
What Does A Gooseberry Look Like?
The Gooseberry bush is a thorny shrub with three to five-leaf leaves and tasty berries that come in different colors, but the most common color is yellowish-green.
The flower is bell-shaped with reddish leaves and smaller white-yellow petals on the bell's edge.
The berries often have stiff bristles and the most common color is yellowish-green. Refined varieties may have dark red fruits.
Gooseberries have varieties with both large and small berries. The stems thorns are very sharp.
The berries have a strong color and are very juicy. You can find berries that are yellow, red or green, fuzzy or bare, spherical, oval or pear-shaped.
What do gooseberries look like early, mid and late in the season?
Swipe through the carousel above to see the different stages of gooseberries throughout the season from start to end.
In the first image they are in bloom.
You can already see the start of the berry at the root of the flower.
The second image is taken about 2 weeks later.
The flowers have almost disappeared and you can see the berry has started to grow.
If we wait 3 more weeks you'll see in the third image that the flowers have disappeared and the berry has grown a lot.
They aren't quite ready just yet.
The fourth image is taken 10 days later.
Quite a lot has happened and some of them are ready to be used in jams or marmalade. This is were they have the most pectin content.
You should choose unripe berries when you want to cook some jam or marmalade of your gooseberries.
The younger the berries are the better result you’ll get.
In the final image that's taken about a month later you can see the once green gooseberries have turned to a more yellowish color at the end of their season. This is where you want to save as many as you can.
The berries also become softer.
Unripe berries are quite hard and firm, but late in the season, they loose their firmness.
It can be quite messy to pick overripe gooseberries. That's due to them being too soft to effectively be able to pick them. They tend to break or get squashed if you move too quickly.
Overripe gooseberries also loose their pectin content so we don't use them for jamming.
Another thing that often happens to gooseberries late in the season are spots. Commonly, some of the berries get brown spots on their shell. They are still edible, the spots doesn't change the taste of the berries.
But time does.
At the beginning of the season the berries are quite sour and the longer they stay on the bush, the more sweet they become.
But at the end of the season, the berries turn almost tasteless.
It's as if they overload of all that deliciousness you've been enjoying for the past month and just give up.
That sweet delicious taste vanishes and you're forced to wait until next season.
The gooseberry bush is a green, kind of ordinary looking bush.
The gooseberry bush usually sits quite deep in the ground with its relatively thick roots. From the ground grows thorny stems that just shoots straight up.
Growing straight from the stem, you'll find a lot of green five-leaf leaves.
In the early season, there are bell-shaped flowers that sit right on the stem. Later in the season the flowers turn into gooseberries.
Gooseberries are a bit difficult to pick because the bush's stems have very sharp thorns and the berries grow directly from the stem.
But when you're eating these berries directly from the bush, you make it work. Obviously, you will scratch yourself from time to time, but it's worth it!
When picking a lot of berries at once, I recommend you wear gloves!
Gooseberry bushes grow wild on slopes and in sparse forests. But gooseberries are also cultivated and is a very common garden bush.
You can find gooseberries in Europe, the Caucasus, northwestern Africa, and southwestern Asia. You can also find gooseberries in North America, Canada and northeastern and north-central the United States.
You can grow gooseberries yourself.
They do well in full sun but remember to keep the soil moist when the bush is young and you'll have berries for years to come!
Just like its close relative black currant; gooseberries are prohibited in some states of the US, as they carry white pine blister rust, which is fatal to pines ◳.
Because of the ban, few Americans have seen or tasted currants and gooseberries.
It was in 1911, that a federal ban made it illegal to grow all Ribes, including currants and gooseberries because the plants served as an intermediary host of white pine blister rust.
But because of development of new disease-resistant plant varieties, the federal ban was lifted in 1966, leaving individual states to decide what types of Ribes plants to allow. Even today, the ban remains in some states.
This history has made it difficult for the Ribes fruits to recover their popularity. Some states still have the ban, like Massachusetts. ◳
If you want to plant your gooseberries, you should choose a durable variety. Gooseberries are easily attacked by gooseberry mildew.
The European form of gooseberry mildew is quite harmless, but the American one can do great damage to the bush.
Affected plants get a white coating on leaves, berries, and stems.
The coating later turns into brown and the berries are destroyed.
In order not to be affected, you should primarily choose gooseberry varieties that are resistant to mildew.
You should also prune the bushes so that they become airy. Pruning will also give you a better harvest.
If you are to grow your gooseberries yourself you are in for a treat.
Gooseberry plants can produce berries for as long as 40 years.
Just remember to site them in a sunny spot with good drainage and have slightly acidic and moist soil.
If you don't have a bush in your garden, but want to try planting one yourself there's a small, starter sized gooseberry plant #ad available through Amazon that you can buy.
Be sure to check with your local authority so that you are allowed to have a gooseberry plant before you buy though.
If you have gooseberry bushes in your yard that isn't mildew resistant and your bushes are unlucky enough to get mildew on them, there are some things you can do.
Some companies sell pesticides to spray the bushes, but if you think about it, do you want to eat the berries after they have been through showers, of more or less dangerous chemicals?
I sure wouldn't.
The mildew is rarely fatal, but it does weaken the plant and spoil the fruit.
The mildew appears as a white powder on young shoots and rapidly spreads to older leaves and shoots.
The first thing you should do to control the gooseberry mildew is to prune out badly affected shoots and fruit.
If it isn't enough to prune the bush, there are two methods that’s not officially recommended but have some base in research.
There’s also testimonials that both methods works to take combat that powdery mildew that covers your plant. It's worth a try.
The other method involves using a bicarbonate solution
- Make a solution of bicarbonate in water, 5g per liter
- Spray on your plant once a week to control the powdery mildew
- Spray until runoff
Early spray applications are necessary to protect the berries against powdery mildew infections. (source ◳)
This method involves spraying your gooseberry bush with milk. It can’t be more natural than that!
Milk has shown to be able to boost the plant's immune system.
The best recommended mixture is 40% milk and 60% water.
It doesn't matter if you use skim or whole milk because it’s the protein rather than the milk fat that’s working on your behalf.
But you need to be a bit careful and not overdo it, if the milk concentration is too high there’s a risk that you end up with fungus on your plants instead of mildew.
Just as with the bicarbonate method you spray your gooseberry with the milk solution once a week.
If you don't have big a garden to plant lots of nice bushes, or maybe you live in an apartment with a balcony but still wants to get the summer feeling by picking your own fresh gooseberries.
There is a solution for you! You can plant a gooseberry bush in a pot.
The bush needs lots of soil, so the pot needs to be quite large.
It needs to contain about 1 cubic foot of soil.
In the bottom, you should have a layer of hydro grains for the drainage and a small hole in the bottom is also needed so that any excess water can drain.
Then it's just a matter of planting your bush and after a while start enjoying the berries it will give you.
It might sound too simple to be true, but with enough soil (large pot) there’s nothing magical about it.
That ordinary looking green bush will bless you with its bounty for years if you take good care of it.
The gooseberry blooms at the end of spring with flowers that are directly attached to the stem.
The berries usually become ripe from late June to September in Scandinavia.
In the US gooseberries are an early berry that comes on in June or July with a short season of three to four weeks.
There are differences between variety's when the berries become ripe. The growing zone also affects the length of their season.
One great tip is to taste the berries directly from the shrub when you begin to suspect that they might be ripe.
You know that they are ripe when they are perfectly soft and sweet.
Remember that when making jam or marmalade you should use unripe gooseberries.
When the gooseberries become soft and come off easily, they are ripe.
The time to pick might vary from year to year depending on how the spring and the summer weather has been. The berries like lots of sun.
Gooseberries can be stored in different ways to prolong its freshness. It's a luxury to eat berries out of season.
You can freeze, dehydrate or make a preserve of your fresh gooseberries.
The first thing you need to do is to sort through the berries and remove the small shaft with a scale knife.
Remember: Don't wash the berries until you're ready to eat them if you store them in your fridge. Otherwise, the moisture from rinsing will cause them to rot. If you process the berries you need to wash them first.
Freezing what's left of the harvest and have gooseberries in the winter is a luxury that few can enjoy.
You can keep your gooseberries in the fridge for a few weeks after harvest. Don't put too much in your fridge, you don't want the berries to go bad.
The easiest way to preserve your gooseberries is to freeze them.
You should not wait with freezing gooseberries. The result is so much better if you freeze the excess immediately.
After freezing them you have the option of grabbing some of the berries from the freezer for that special juice, jam or why not a gooseberry cake?
Berries for juices and jellies do not need to be cleaned as well as jams or pastries as the shells are supposed to be strained out.
- Rinse the gooseberries
- Dry the berries thoroughly with paper towels by placing the rinsed berries on a paper towel and use another paper towel to gently pat them dry
- Be sure to soak up all the excess water on the berries with the paper towels. If you don't dry the berries completely, they'll grow ice crystals in the freezer which affects the flavor
- Spread your dried gooseberries in a single layer on a wax paper-lined baking sheet
- Place them in the freezer for about 10 minutes. This process is called “flash freezing”. You're simply freezing the berries enough so that they won't stick together when you put your berries into a freezable plastic container.
This procedure makes it easier for you when you later just need a few berries.
- Pour the flash freezed gooseberries in a suitable container
- Mark your container with the date you froze them
- You can have the plastic container in the freezer for up to 1 year. After 1 year, the berries may still be safe to eat but they will begin losing flavor
Now you can enjoy gooseberries all year round!
You can dry gooseberries yourself.
The dehydrating process for gooseberries is relatively simple, you can use a food dehydrator or your kitchen oven.
- Gooseberries selected for drying should be fully ripe
- Select the finest berries
- Rinse them thoroughly under cool running water
- Remove the stems and take off the small nip
- Set your oven at 140 - 150 F or 60 – 65 C
- It will take about 4 hours, depending on the size of the berries
- Check on them periodically. Completely dry berries should be something like a small prune
- Let them cool off, then place them in an airtight container
There are of course several ways to make preserves of gooseberries. Jam, jellies or marmalade.
A nice and sweet gooseberry jam is something to look forward to.
I will give you an easy recipe for a gooseberry jam with a small twist that I think makes all the difference!
You add cinnamon, that gives the jam a dimension you don't often get in bought gooseberry jams.
It's not required to add the cinnamon. If you don't like it you can make the jam without it. But I recommend that you try it!
The cinnamon provides you with some health benefits as well.
It's considered to be a very healthy spice due to its content of antioxidants and other nutrients.
Gooseberry jam with cinnamon is a delicacy!
Gooseberry Jam With Cinnamon
Gooseberry jam with some cinnamon for that extra dimension in flavors.
Category: Preserves
Cuisine: Scandinavian
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Ingredients (1 liter, quart)
- 4,2 cups (1 liter) of Gooseberries
- 0,5 cups (1 dl) of water
- 1,5 cups (3 dl) of sugar
- 4 cinnamon sticks
Instructions
- Clear the gooseberries and cut them into smaller pieces
- Put them in a pot and add water
- Heat gently and cook until the berries are soft
- Add sugar and cinnamon
- Cook for about 10 minutes
- Pour the jam into well-cleaned sterilized jars
- Close the lid tightly so that your jam can be stored for a long time
Enjoy your home-made Gooseberry Jam with a Scandinavian twist!
If you aren’t able to make your own jam, here's a gooseberry jam #ad available on Amazon that I recommend.
The Jam itself has a tasty tart and sweet flavor and it contains a lot of real gooseberries.
If you have a hard time getting hold of gooseberries recommend you turn to Amazon.
Online stores might not feel like the most logical place when buying berries but nowadays you can buy a multitude of different products made from berries and even fresh berries (mostly frozen) from the comfort of your own home.
For fresh gooseberries I recommend you check out these frozen ones #ad available through Amazon.
We've also put together a recommended page for all gooseberry products.
There you'll find all our carefully selected gooseberry products.
I love gooseberries!
Gooseberries taste amazing and there are so many nice things you can do with them. A sweet, warm gooseberry pie with some vanilla ice cream or whipped cream is absolutely delicious!
Gooseberries are also very nutritious for you. Adding them to your diet can give you several health benefits as it contains the super-useful antioxidant quercetin.
Gooseberries are easy to grow and the shrub almost takes care of itself (just be careful when choosing the site).
Many plants, like the gooseberry shrub, can be shaped into small trees that only become more beautiful over the years. It's convenient if you're short of space, like on a balcony.
I recommend that you try gooseberries if you haven't done it already.
In some places, it might be a bit difficult to find gooseberries to buy.
But you know, with the internet, nothing is impossible!
And if you ever get the chance to eat ripe, fresh sun-warmed gooseberries straight from the bush, be sure to experience it.
With thorns and all!
What are the major health benefits of eating gooseberries?
Eating Gooseberries might be able to help lower your blood pressure and are belived to act anti-inflammatory. Gooseberries also contain antihistamines that lessen the effects of allergies, such as hay fever.
Can gooseberries be eaten raw?
Yes, gooseberries are edible as they are, straight from the bush. Raw, uncooked Gooseberries provide you with the most nutrients and health benefits as heating/cooking berries usually lowers their nutrient content.
Why are/were gooseberries banned in USA?
Because the Ribes plants serves as an intermediary host of white pine blister rust, which threatened the whole timber industry.
When are gooseberries ripe?
When they are soft and feel somewhat bouncy
when you squeeze them between your fingers. Ripe Gooseberries come off easily from the stem. The Gooseberry season in Scandinavia is between late june to september. In USA their season is shorter (3-4 weeks) around june/july.
