When are gooseberries ready to pick

A common question when growing gooseberries is “When are gooseberries ready to pick?” Sometimes it’s easy to grow fruit and vegetables but it’s knowing when the best time is a to actually pick the produce.

You can start to pick gooseberries from the end of May, these are usually quite hard and extreamly tart, lets see your best faces pulled when eating them. These are usually used for crumbles and pies as the the sugar in them will make it taste less tart.

It is a good idea to start picking them early as this will thin the fruit out letting the others grow bigger. When you are picking them though make sure you watch out for the thorns out the plant they are extremely sharp and can really hurt you. Don’t let children pick the gooseberries.

If you notice the gooseberries falling off the bush that will be a sign that they are also ready to be picked. The longer that you leave the gooseberries on the bush to ripen they will get sweeter and not as tart. They will also get more softer and juicy.

You can also grow dessert gooseberries, these are often larger than the standard gooseberry. They can be eaten straight from the plant and are ready around the end of July. They will often turn a pinkish colour. These are called Leveller

Now you know when are gooseberries are ready to pick.

Allotment and Kitchen Garden Book

Are you starting an allotment or planning on growing your own fruit, vegetables, herbs, and flowers in a kitchen garden? If so we highly recommend the book Allotment Month By Month. This does exactly what it does on the cover to help you with what you should be doing in the allotment and kitchen garden each month. Below you can see the link for Amazon where you can purchase the book directly. This book is extremely popular with all allotment holders as you will read in the reviews:-

You can check out all the allotment and kitchen garden books we recommend here.