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<\/a><\/p>\nAfter the blackcurrants comes the far more manageable gooseberry crop.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s absolutely no deal with the birds on this. It\u2019s a smaller bush \u2013 or actually two grown together \u2013 and I have draped it completely with netting so they can\u2019t get to it.<\/p>\n
Last year I reckon I collected about 80 gooseberries, so a handful or so a day, which I ate over a few weeks without freezing any for a later date. There\u2019s no surplus to give away. (I don\u2019t know how many blackcurrants I get but it\u2019s probably over 2,000, by comparison.)<\/p>\n
More importantly, the gooseberry bush is my proudest addition to the garden. The blackcurrant bush was there when I arrived. So was the apple tree, which is so prolific it is actually a burden to me.<\/p>\n
My sister gave me a small gooseberry bush as a sort of joke because I had initially claimed to have one. Blackcurrants are green before they ripen, so look a bit like gooseberries. It was a cause of some hilarity in my family that I continued to believe for about two years that I had a gooseberry bush producing purple and black gooseberries (!) when in fact I had a blackcurrant bush.<\/p>\n
So I planted the gooseberry bush and have watered and tended it for 4 years. This is the first year it has really paid off, sprouting somewhere in the region of 200 berries. That may not sound a lot but they are hefty \u2013 as big as grapes (though that isn\u2019t the first comparison that springs to mind).<\/p>\n
Gooseberries aren\u2019t hard to grow. They are resilient and don\u2019t need a prime spot in the garden. They are not a hugely popular fruit as they aren\u2019t sweet enough to eat. They aren\u2019t something people buy; I have only once seen punnets of gooseberries on sale in Britain. Usually people \u201chave to\u201d process them into jam to consume them, which is quite hard work. I just throw them into smoothies with other bananas and a bit of honey.<\/p>\n
This means I sort of don\u2019t know what gooseberries taste like. So it follows that I don\u2019t exactly know if I like them. But that\u2019s not the point: they are my gooseberries and I love them.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Garden Observations, part 2 2017.07.23 After the blackcurrants comes the far more manageable gooseberry crop. There\u2019s absolutely no deal with the birds on this. It\u2019s a smaller bush \u2013 or actually two grown together \u2013 and I have draped it completely with netting so they can\u2019t get to it. Last year I reckon I collected about 80 gooseberries, so a handful or so a day, which I ate over a few weeks without freezing any for a later date. There\u2019s no surplus to give away. (I don\u2019t know how many blackcurrants I get but it\u2019s probably over 2,000, by comparison.) More importantly, the gooseberry bush is my proudest addition to the garden. The blackcurrant bush was there when I arrived.[\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-colinjoyce","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sankenbook.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sankenbook.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sankenbook.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sankenbook.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sankenbook.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1175"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.sankenbook.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1192,"href":"https:\/\/www.sankenbook.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1175\/revisions\/1192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sankenbook.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sankenbook.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sankenbook.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}