All About Gooseberries

It’s easy to walk by a gooseberry bush and not notice a single berry. But if you look closely at just the right time, you’ll see green berries beginning to form on the bush’s big, woody branches. The tart and flavorful fruit is almost invisible, blending perfectly into the bush’s foliage. It’s not until later that gooseberries take on a more purplish hue and can be easier to spot. 

When picked green, gooseberries are very tart. They sweeten as they become more mature and rosy colored. You can pick gooseberries at either time—just make sure to wait for them to be soft and plump. 

Tall garden boots, long sleeves, long pants and a big brimmed hat make up the common wardrobe of any gooseberry picker this time of year. Gooseberry bushes can be pretty mean, with lots of thorns and wild branches, so picking the berries is not easy. Because the fruit grows on older branches, the largest and most plump bunches of berries can be deep inside a big thorny bush. This is partly why growing, picking and cooking with gooseberries is thought to be a labor of love. 

In Europe, gooseberries are considered an ancient fruit, and as early as the 1740s gooseberry clubs were organized in Britain. These clubs had annual competitions where growers vied for the largest or most flavorful fruit. The American gooseberry is what you often find in Missouri. This species handles cold winters and hot summers nicely, needing little fertilization, although it’s best to lightly fertilize your bush each year for a healthy crop. Annual pruning and watering will also ensure you get a plethora of berries each summer. Many of the gooseberry bushes in the Ozarks are wild bushes that grow in woody lots, like the bushes at Providence Farm (5147 Pleasant Hill Rd., Seymour). The Hunter family’s five children are often tasked with the job of picking the wild gooseberries at the farm from the end of May and continuing for about six weeks. 

With gooseberry season coming and going so quickly, you have a short window to hop on the gooseberry bandwagon. The most popular way to use gooseberries is making a pie or a crisp like the Hunter family does with what they don’t sell at the Farmers Market of the Ozarks. Keep in mind that before cooking with gooseberries you must remove any stems and the flower remnants must be plucked off each berry individually—a tedious task but an important one. The fact that people gladly do this labor attests to how much they enjoy the flavor of gooseberries. Whether you’re picking gooseberries from your own bushes, foraging for them or buying at your local farmers market, the hunt for this rare berry is a big part of the fun.