Gooseberries are a fairly common berry crop. Its advantages are early maturity, high annual productivity, early ripening, useful properties, nutritional value, medical and dietary qualities, multifaceted use. The useful properties of gooseberries are that the vitamin C in the berries is harmoniously combined with vitamin P, which is very important, since these vitamins work most effectively together.
Gooseberry's homeland is Canada, where its wild species grow almost to the Arctic Circle. The first information about him appeared in France in the 13th century. At first it was used as a bush for hedges. Only in the XVI century gooseberries were introduced into culture in France, from where it spread throughout Europe. In America, it began to be cultivated much later.
According to the famous scientist-breeder Claudia Dmitrievna Sergeeva, gooseberries were bred in monastery gardens in Russia in the XI century. However, this culture was widely developed in Russia in amateur gardens only in the 19th century due to the cultivation of the best European varieties.
Currently, the culture of gooseberries is widespread in Russia, Poland, Germany, England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, USA, Canada, and other countries. For example, in Hungary, the berry harvest of this crop is 8–13 thousand tons per year; Zeld Orihash, Pallagi Orihash, Sentendrej Feher, Pirosh Izletesh are grown here. In the southern regions of Ukraine, it occupies 8-10% of the total berry area. Gooseberries are widely distributed in Russia in the Northwest, Central, Central Black Earth, Volga-Vyatka and Volga economic regions.
Among berry crops, gooseberries are characterized by the highest annual productivity.
Gooseberry Benefits
Gooseberries are beautiful, varied, healthy, have high taste, rich in sugars, acids, minerals, calories, and are well preserved when transported over long distances. In terms of transportability, it surpasses all other berry crops.
Berries contain organic acids up to 3, and sugars up to 13%. One hundred grams of fruits contain 200 mg of potassium, 75 - phosphorus, 30 - calcium, 0.5 - iron, 0.3 mg - 10% nitrogenous compounds. The composition of the biologically active substances of gooseberry berries includes vitamin C (30-40 mg%), vitamin P (100-250, and its varieties with cherry color contain up to 700-1000 mg%), vitamin B, folic acid - 0.005-0, 25 mg%), vitamin A (carotene - 0.5-1.0 mg%). High levels of iron (1.8-4.6 mg%) and serotonin (1.4 mg%), a compound that increases blood pressure in hypotensive patients and lowers in hypertensive patients, were noted.
Gooseberries are rich in P-active substances (Kakhetins, anthocyanins). Due to the high content of pectin substances, they have the ability to bind in the human body, as well as remove radioactive elements from it - strontium, cobalt, and others. This is another useful property of gooseberries.
Berries are recommended for the prevention of diseases of the kidneys, bladder, anemia. They help strengthen blood vessels, are used for diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, with vitamin deficiency.
Gooseberries are a good raw material for making juices, preserves, jellies, jams. Its fruits can be salted, they are an excellent component in the combined jam from apples, berry berries, mountain ash, currants.
The most useful, valuable gooseberry products are juice (a large number of pectins, the prevention of radiation diseases), raw jam (a significant amount of vitamin P, the prevention of hypertension, vascular sclerosis) and preserves rich in oxycoumarins (the prevention of blood coagulation, blood clots, blood clots, heart attacks).
The berries of dessert gooseberry varieties are of high quality, a wide variety of taste, aroma. They are useful for fresh consumption, are recommended by medicine as a dietary product for preventive therapeutic purposes. In addition, they can be used green or ripe.
Gooseberry leaves are used as a hemostatic agent. Decoctions from the leaves are used as a diuretic, for gastrointestinal colic, indigestion.
Watch a video about the beneficial properties of gooseberries and the features of some varieties.
Botanical and biological characteristics of gooseberries, its characteristics
Gooseberries belong to the gooseberry family - Crossulariaccoe Dumont, genus - Grossularia Mill. The genus has 52 species. Only three species grow in our country: rejected (K. European) - G. reclinata (L.) Mill., Needle-shaped - G. aciculatis (Smith) Spach and Bureinsky (K. Far Eastern) - G. bureienses (Fr. Schm) Berger . However, to obtain many varieties cultivated in our country, a number of American species were used.
Among berry crops, gooseberries are distinguished by the largest variety of morphological characters.
Plants are a typical perennial weakly, medium- or strong-growing shrub with a height of 0.5-1.5, sometimes 2.0 m and, as a rule, of the same diameter.
According to the habit of the crown, there are straight-growing, compact, medium-spreading, sprawling bushes. For technology of mechanized cultivation, harvesting, straight-growing and slightly spreading forms of bushes are more acceptable.
The gooseberry root shoots are straight, deflected, bent, in many varieties with a hanging top, in summer the colors of the upper part are green, red, purple, of different shades, in the fall after lignification they are grayish, brown, dark brown, with a wax coating or without it, pubescent or not pubescent, matte or shiny.
An important test sign is the prickling of the branches of gooseberries. Spikes are single, 2-4-split, long, short, thick, medium, thin, light or dark colored.
The buds are pressed or deflected from the shoot, conical, oblong, with a sharp or blunt tip.
Gooseberry leaves are simple, alternate, 3-5-lobed, with deep or shallow cutouts, a blunt or sharp tip, large, medium or small. The colors are green, light green, yellowish green. The surface of the plate is straight, convex or concave, wrinkled or smooth, leathery or soft, shiny or dull, with or without pubescence. The base of the sheet is straight, convex or recessed. The teeth are short, medium or long, blunt or sharp, bent or not bent.
The leaves of vegetative shoots and fruit-bearing branches of gooseberries are not the same. They vary in size, shape, color. More permanent, typical, distinctive features are the leaves of the middle part of annual vegetative shoots.
Inflorescences (flower brush) is located in the axils of the leaf. They are reduced, in them 1-3, sometimes 4-5 flowers.
Flowers are up to 1.3 cm long. They consist of a nondescript pericarp, a bell-shaped calyx formed by five bent sepals, and five very small petals. Sepals are greenish or greenish-red, pale or bright, fused at the base into a tube. Petals are white, greenish, pink, reddish or yellowish, freely alternating with five stamens. One pestle pestle, consisting of two carpels, bifurcated at the top. Ovary lower, single-celled, multi-seeded, including 25-16 ovules. The fruit is a false berry, in the formation of which the receptacle is involved.
The main distinguishing feature of gooseberry varieties are fruits (berries). By size, fruits are divided into large (weighing 4 g or more), medium (weighing from 2 to 4 g), small (weighing up to 2 g), in shape - round, round, round-oval, oval, pear-shaped, oblong and others .
The color of the berries is whitish, green, yellow, red, purple, pink, golden, dark red, black.
Moreover, each color may have different shades, the skin of the fruit is thin, medium, thick, tender or dense; pubescence of the skin - simple, glandular, sometimes mixed.
In gooseberry varieties of the American type, the berries are covered with a wax coating of different densities, colors (usually gray or purple). Venation is distinguished by the nature of branching. Veins can be parallel, without jumpers, or (in most varieties) branched. The peduncle can be long, medium, short, conical or cylindrical in shape. The calyx, which remains dried up on the upper part of the fetus, can be open, half-open, or closed.
To taste the berries are distinguished sweet, sour-sweet, sour.
The adult gooseberry bush consists of several axial basal branches, which are formed from sleeping and adnexal buds located at the base of the stem. Basal (zero) shoots in the first year reach a height of up to 1 m and almost do not branch. Buds on annual shoots are growth. In the second year, at the bottom of the annual shoots, branches of the second, third and subsequent orders form. An extension shoot develops from the apical kidney, which is significantly less in length than the growth of the previous year. Then the value of annual growths along the central axis and lateral branches decreases. Thus, the developed root shoots, forming lateral branches, turn into branches, and then begin to bear fruit.
The first flower buds of gooseberries are more often laid in the third year of life on second-order branches, sometimes on one-two year olds, even on zero shoots. In their structure they are mixed. After fruiting, a small shoot of substitution grows from the same bud. This is how short (about 3 cm) pads (gloves) are formed. In some varieties they live, bear fruit for 2-3 years, in others with the formation of regular lateral branches, they turn into bouquet branches (up to 5 cm long) that can live and bear fruit for up to 10-15 years. In most cases, 1-2-year-old growths on the branches of 4-7-year-old give the maximum yield.
Gooseberry bush should have 15-25 branches. The branches grow well and bear fruit until a certain age, then their growth weakens or completely stops, the berries become small, the yield decreases, the branches grow old, die off. In order to avoid a significant decrease in yields, old branches are cut out and replaced with new ones.
In one place, with good care, gooseberries can grow, yield crops for 25-30 years. However, the highest productivity of this culture is observed for 12-15 years.
In the internodes of gooseberry shoots, altered leaves are formed - spikes. Most of them are at the base of the kidneys. Depending on the variety of thorns, there can be from 1 to 4 pieces, up to 2 cm long. There are varieties (Russian, Finik, etc.) in which, in the second year of life, the branch cleans itself of thorns to half its length. In summer, buds are formed in the sinuses of the thorns, as well as in the internodes of the studless shoots, from which new shoots are formed, and then branches.
The root system of the gooseberry is fibrous, vertical. The bulk of the roots is concentrated in a 50-centimeter soil layer, only individual roots penetrate to a depth of 1.5 m. In the Kuban, on superpowerful, low humus chernozems, up to 2-3.5 m. Roots, as a rule, extend under the crown of the bush to a distance up to 0.5-0.7 m from its center.
Among berry crops, gooseberries along with currants are distinguished by the earliest bud blooming. Its vegetation begins already at an average daily temperature above 5 ° C. The most intensive growth of basal shoots occurs during flowering, as well as at the beginning of the formation of berries.
The vast majority of species, varieties of gooseberries are self-fertile. However, the degree of their self-fertility varies significantly. According to the degree of self-fertility (berry binding during self-pollination) varieties, gooseberry species are divided into four groups:
- with good self-fertility (30-42%) - Moscow Red, Russian, Russian Yellow, Plum, Malachite, Change;
- with average self-fertility (20-30%) - African, Northern grapes, Houghton, Prune, Date, English yellow, Anniversary, Brazilian, Pink early;
- with low self-fertility (5-14%) - Chelyabinsk green, Weak 3, Black Sea, Bureinsky;
- self-infertile (less than 3%) - variety Record and wild species - Powerful, Spreading, Dyeing, Beshipny, Altai mountain.
Despite self-fertility, the presence of several gooseberry varieties on the plot improves pollination, increases yield. Pollinators are bees.
At the end of the flowering and fertilization of the flower, the ovary of the gooseberry begins to increase rapidly. The length of the period from setting to full ripening of berries depends on the variety, meteorological conditions. This period lasts 2-2.5 months. Dates of full ripening of berries are (tentatively):
- Leningrad region - the first half of August,
- Tambov region - the first days of July-early August,
- Krasnodar Territory - mid-June.