4. Breeding gooseberries for showing
A Cheshire enthusiast
With little commercial interest in producing new gooseberry cultivars, it's down to the gooseberry association members to introduce new blood. One Cheshire grower, Frank Carter, has bred many that have gone on to win for their growers, including 'Montrose' that Kelvin Archer has had so much success with.
'You need patience and a big garden for growing on seedlings and for producing winning berries,' Frank Carter told us, 'and luck.'
Persistence required
He added, 'It's a problem breeding gooseberries because the flowers are self fertile, and insect pollinated, so it's difficult to control. But seedlings have far more vigour than cuttings so it's worth doing. It takes at least two years to know whether the seedling is any good, with berries having to weigh at least 25dwt to be acceptable.'
If the berries make the grade, and are sufficiently different from existing varieties, the grower is allowed to name it and enter it in the shows.
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