Cape gooseberry
Cape gooseberries are little orangey fruit that I had only ever seen as a garnish on puddings, in much the same way as parsley is used as garnish on savoury dishes. However, when a friend gave us a couple of cape gooseberry plants I thought we had better show willing and give them a go.
They are quite tender plants (originating from Brazil), so do best under cover. They are also perennial plants, so once established, if looked after, could continue to produce fruit for some time to come.
Cape Gooseberry plant
Something to be wary of is the size they get. Luckily I had tucked them in a bed at the end of the polytunnel so that they had a bit of room to spread, but I didn’t think they would get quite as big as they have. They are well above head height, and if it wasn’t for the walls of the polytunnel would be about as wide. There isn’t a huge amount of foliage, just lots of floppy branches, which I have now tied up, which has also helped with getting to the fruit.
The plant is related to the Chinese Lantern ornamental plant that people grow in the flower garden, and produces loads of papery lanterns, which contain the fruit. The lanterns gradually turn from green to brown and the fruit inside turns from green to orange and swells up. We’ve been picking them once the lanterns are brown and having a handful at a time. I’m not too sure about the taste, and can’t decide whether I like them – they are both sweet and sour.
The fruits have a high pectin content so are good for using in jams, however, I don’t think we’re going to get enough ripening all at once to be able to collect a sizeable quantity at any one time. As we haven’t got any other soft fruit in the garden at the moment, they make a different alternative to strawberries or raspberries, which are nice to just nibble on. I came up with this recipe for an Upside-down cake, that uses up quite a few gooseberries at once.
Although they take up quite a lot of space, once they have finished fruiting, I will leave them be and see if they survive the winter. If they do I’ll try and keep them more under control next year, and restrict their growth to a more manageable size. However, if they don’t make it into next year, it’s been good to try something I would never have thought of growing, and has given us the idea to try something different every year.