Do you ever wonder about the person who first had the temerity to put gooseberries in a pie? Brilliant! And right now, early June, is the time to pick them.
Gooseberries grow wild all over the state, and foraging for wild gooseberries is allowed on conservation area lands. You might also find some at farmers’ markets in early June.
Patrick Byers, a regional field specialist with University of Missouri Extension, based at Marshfield, says Missouri used to be a major gooseberry producer, having produced more than 800,000 quarts of gooseberries in 1899, according to the 1900 national census. The Missouri gooseberry even has the state in its Latin genus and species name: Ribes missouriense.
“Today, we probably have less than five acres,” he says. “Most berry producers will say they have a few rows ‘on the side’ of their main berry crops,” he adds. Most commercial gooseberries are grown in the Northwest United States and canned.
Patrick loves gooseberries and eats them fresh, right off the bush as well as when they’ve turned red and ripened. The best time to pick them, he says, is when they’ve turned from a grass-green to a golden- or yellow-green to get the tart berry for pies. As the gooseberries turn to pink or purple or red, they become sweeter as the acidity of the berry drops, and they can be used in jams. “I never met a gooseberry I didn’t like,” he says.
His favorite treats are a blue-goose pie, made with blueberries, and a rich vanilla custard pie topped with the tart green, cooked gooseberries. Gooseberries can be frozen, and then the stems fall right off, although gooseberry lovers will do the painstaking work of destemming them while they are fresh.
“Ripe red gooseberries would also make a nice local replacement for cranberries in salads,” says Marilyn Odneal, horticulture specialist at the Mountain Grove Campus of Missouri State University’s Fruit Experiment Station. The Missouri Department of Conservation website also recommends using leaves of gooseberries in tossed salads or for tea.
Gooseberries make nice landscape plants, too. They are thorny and resistant to deer and rabbit, with clusters of greenish-white, slender flowers in April and May. The leaves turn an attractive reddish-brown to purple in the fall. Reddish-brown branches add winter interest. Gooseberries are unusual for a berry plant, in that they can grow in partial shade, Marilyn notes.
“People who like gooseberries love them,” says Martha Bohner, who with her husband Earnie, runs Persimmon Hill Farm at Lampe. “We normally offer a few rows of gooseberries on the side,” Martha says, as part of their you-pick berry operation. But this year, they have replanted the gooseberries, and they won’t be ready for a couple of years. Persimmon Hill Farm has nine acres of berries, mostly blueberries, as well as a few blackberries and elderberries.
Still, the farm makes and sells gooseberry jam, and you can order from its inventory: Gooseberry Black Walnut Jam and Nutty Blue Goose Jam, which combines black walnuts, blueberries, and gooseberries. Visit PersimmonHill.com.
