Please tell me I can save my gooseberry!

I have a Pixwell gooseberry and this is what most of the berries look like - brown and shriveling. What is it? How can I fix it. I guess I have lost this year's crop and I am so sad. I can't tell you how much I love gooseberry jam. :((((

Do you spray anything for fungus and/or insects?

The berry on the right appears to have puncture wounds from either an insect or possibly a bird. You could spray a broad spectrum insecticide like Sevin for insects, but if it is birds, that won't help. However, birds here tend to take the whole berry while fruit eating insects leave the berry on the plant to rot and dry out. There are many insects that will eat gooseberry fruit (We have wasps and flies here that will bite through the berry skin, to say nothing of Japanese beetles (too soon here for them)) Spray immediately with an insecticide that is safe for fruit & berries, follow up with an appropriate fungicide. I would use something that leaves a residue to catch whatever opportunistic bugs might be the culprit vs something pyritherin(spelling?) based which doesn't stay around long. From what I could make out, it does not look like a fungus is the cause. More pictures of damaged fruit and more pictures of the leaves would help.

I solved my insect problems here by screening in my ripening gooseberries and blueberries. No more bugs or birds problems!

I haven't sprayed with anything. Here is another picture.

And another picture. Gooseberries are banned in several states close to me - I don't think that there are any pines near by and the is something with pines that cause the banning . . . The leave look perfect and the plant is healthy.

White Pine Blister Rust does not do much damage to gooseberries and does not fit the symptoms of your problem. I have never seen it here, but the description of the disease does not seem to be consistent with your pictures.

Your plant looks healthy except for the berries. I would spray with liquid Sevin immediately but before that, pick/remove all dead & damaged fruit, including any that may be on the ground. Put in zip lock bag in shady area for a couple of days and see if any bugs hatch out of the berries. There is a type of insect that attacks gooseberry fruit and you should find small maggots in the berries if you have that. But don't wait to see them, spray immediately. It also wouldn't hurt to put out some sticky traps (for mice). I still think it is an insect of some sort. That picture of the punctured berry suggests something is actually biting through the skin of the berry.

Thank you.

You are welcome. Please let me know what happens, I am interested.

By way of further thought, you might want to get a chair and take a seat near the plant, early morning, afternoon and at night (with some light, of course), spend an hour and see if you can catch the culprit doing the damage. That is how I discovered my fruit eating wasp problem.

Good luck! I grow a lot of gooseberries, but they never make it to the pie or jam stage. Pixwell has a reputation for not being the best gooseberry for fresh eating. There are much better varieties out there for fresh eating. Hinnomaki Red or Poorman would be a good place to start for adding a table gooseberry to your garden. Both have aromatic, sweet red fruit and excellent flavor. Picked unripe, you can still make jam or pie, but when ripe, you can enjoy the berries fresh.

For those just starting out and wanting a gb patch that spans a range of types and flavors: Hinnomaki Yellow, Hinnomaki Red, Black Velvet, Jostaberry and Swedish White (currant) rings a lot of bells...

Now the leaves are turning brown! I only have room for one gooseberry unless you know of one that grows taller and doesn't spread too wide - I'd have to slip it in with some currants. I only have a small city lot 50' x 100' with a house and oversized garage on it. Thank goodness I have good neighbors that let me grow stuff in their yards! Can you think of anything to spray the gooseberries that is considered organic?

Need a picture of the browning leaves. Gooseberries can lose a lot of leaves and still recover. Causes can be mildew or black spot, both fungal diseases. There is also a cane borer that affects currants but does not seem to affect gooseberries much.

Here is a picture of the stems with the dying leaves.

Does the browning go all the way to the end of the stem? If so, it could be a cane borer. Not a big deal generally. Just cut the stem back at least 6" below the browning and put in the trash (do NOT compost). I assume here that this is limited to just one or two stems.

For the fruit damage, if it is gooseberry fruitworms, you should see webbing spun near the fruits. I have never seen this pest, so cannot help too much more. If you are looking for organic solutions, you could try BT. I did not see any webbing in your pictures, however. Still think it is something biting the fruits.

Hard to tell if the fruit and stem damage are related. Have you tried you agricultural extension agent?

Also, still think you should remove the damaged fruit right away.

I know - I promise to go out and do that right now. *hanging head in shame* I will miss my gooseberry jam this year. I will also cut the browning branches back and put them in the trash. Sigh.

Damaged fruit is gone and damaged branches are too. I picked up all the fruit I could off the ground considering there are thorns. I did find one little webby thing.

Since you found some webbing and it is mostly fruits affected, I would spray with BT. I understand many feel that BT is organic. If you beat the worms from hatching out by removing all the affected fruit in time, you may have limited further damage. Spray with BT as soon as you can. Next season, spray with BT before the berries get large. I'd make a note of it on my calendar. Hopefully you will have enough berries left this season to make at least a little jam!

I would be very sad if I didn't get any jam at all.

But if you have fruitworm and do not spray, your jam my be high-protein in content!

Well, as long as I didn't know . . .

Yeah, a balanced diet is important and we in the US do not do enough of incorporating the insect family. :-)

Sprayed with BT last night and found that my currants are affected, too. Sprayed them but there will be no fruit this year.

Sorry, been trying to help. Still not sure you have fruitworms, but good chance that may be the cause.

Sticky traps for rodents and watch for any other cuplrits so you know what you are dealing with for next year. Since the crop is gone, you really need to find out what was doing it.

I once had a chipmonk that would bite the fruits. He got stuck in my bird net one night. I found him and released him, but the experience convinced him to move away. No more problems (so far) with the screen hoop houses. I'll try to get a pic for you.

I let one of my cats go outside when I am home and she sits near that gooseberry and catches voles for me. I bet she would love to catch chipmunks. I had a bird get caught in a net over my blueberries and it was so traumatic for me that I won't net anything. I'd rather share a little than hurt a bird. I don't have room for a hoop house as the gooseberry grows in a narrow strip of land between my garage and the neighbors chain link fence. You have been a great help, thank you.

You're welcome. There are birds and then there are robins. I have hundreds of dollars invested in small fruit plants of every type I could find that would grow in this area. However, there are only one or two plants per type, so not a lot of fruit production at any one time. The flying rats eat everything before it gets ripe. That robins. The other birds may take a fruit or two, but the aggressive robins take everything. They also stridently complain to me when I am outside working about the neighborhood cat. They never shut up. The only solution I could find was to cover the plants. Started out with birdnet, then larger mesh net, then hoop houses netted, finally screened hoop houses. I would not even see a blueberry r a gooseberry or a currant if I didn't do this. You are very lucky, from my point of view, to have enough gooseberries to make jam from a single, uncovered gb plant. The robins in your area must be gentlemen.

I feed two neighborhood cats that like to lounge in the backyard - I'm thinking that they are my fruit security team.

Just thought I'd let everybody know that the gooseberry is leafing out just fine this spring. I have my BT from last year so I am going to start spraying it early this year.

Good to hear that. If you use window screen on your hoop houses, you will not catch birds or small mammals, just keep them out.

My gooseberries looked similar to yours last year, and I had NO harvest. So far this year they are looking great.

I did have a small harvest last year even though the plant looked really bad.