In almost every garden plot you can find gooseberries. Landing and caring for it do not require special knowledge, it is enough to take into account several features. In addition, gooseberries are one of the most useful. They remove salts of heavy metals from the body, normalize digestion and pressure.
Today, there are several dozen varieties that are resistant to disease and differ in taste. Here are a few of them to which you can pay attention:
- “Gingerbread Man” is a rather old variety, but to this day shows excellent results. It has a pleasant taste of red berries. The thorns are not very prickly and small - this is especially pleasing in a culture such as gooseberries. Planting and caring for it are no different from other varieties. The only drawback is the tendency to thicken the bush, which is easily corrected with the help of a secateurs.
- “Narodniy” - is characterized by rapid growth, in two years you will be able to collect a full-fledged crop of delicious red berries. In addition, its berries have a high content of vitamin C. And on the shoots a small number of thorns.
- “Ural Emerald” is a wonderful green fruit variety. It is good in everything - both productivity, and excellent taste of berries, and is resistant to diseases, and pests do not particularly like it. But there is one problem - too prickly.
- “Beryl” - has the most delicious yellow-green berries, with proper care they reach 9 grams. This variety also pleases with a small number of thorns.
Unpretentious gooseberry: planting and care
Gooseberries are a photophilous culture that is best planted in open sunny areas. The shrub does not tolerate waterlogging (the root neck can rot), it easily tolerates temporary drought. When planting, the proximity of groundwater should be taken into account, they should not be closer than 1.5 m from the soil surface. If your site has high-standing water, then you can use the method of
high beds or
plant a bush on a knoll. You should know that you can not plant this berry in the place where raspberries or currants used to grow. After these crops, the soil is severely depleted, and common pests and diseases will surely attack the gooseberries. Planting and care should be timely so that subsequently there is a good harvest with large berries.
It is best to plant gooseberries in the period from mid-September to early October. In a one-year-old seedling, the ground part consists of one shoot, the two-year-old should have 2-3 shoots. A good seedling has 3-5 skeletal roots (10-15 cm), the fibrous roots are well developed.
A landing pit is prepared in advance. It is dug round in shape with a depth of 0.5 m and a diameter of 0.5 m, while the fertile layer of land is discarded separately from the underlying.
Take 2/3 of the fertile land, mix with a bucket of manure or compost. Add 50 g of potassium sulfate, 180 g of superphosphate or 220 g of complex mineral fertilizer there. Mix everything well and fill half the pit, pour the remaining fertile soil on top. After 1-2 weeks, this mixture will settle in the pit, you can plant a plant. At the same time, the root neck is deepened by 5-7 cm, the ground around the bush is well trampled, watered and mulched with humus. Shoots should be shortened, leaving 5-7 cm above the ground, this is necessary so that later the plant branches better. This is how gooseberries are planted, care for which in the future involves pruning and thinning.
I would also like to note that this shrub is self-pollinating, but it is much better if there are several bushes on the site, since cross-pollination yields higher yields. It is necessary to form the crown of this plant constantly. Gooseberry pruning occurs annually, all diseased, dry and weak shoots are cut. Only the strongest basal branches should be left. The distance between them should be about 15 cm. If we consider cropping by years, then it looks like this:
- In the first year, all shoots are shortened right on the ground, only 2-3 buds are left.
- In the second year, all shoots shorter than 20 cm, as well as those that are located close to the ground, are removed. Strongly inclined branches are cut by 10-12 cm.
- In the third year, the bush becomes powerful and well-formed, so it only needs to be thinned out.
- In the fourth and fifth year, only those branches that grow too close to the ground are removed.
- In subsequent years, pruning is intensified, as branches older than 6 years will already appear.