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Seasonal yields
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Plant · P-451
American Gooseberry
Ribes hirtellum
American gooseberry is a low, multistemmed shrub native from Labrador and Manitoba south to Maryland and Iowa, and the wild parent behind most mildew-resistant gooseberry cultivars grown today. Its smooth-skinned berries get eaten raw or cooked into jams, jellies, pies and preserves, or dried for storage, and a healthy mature bush can produce eight to ten pounds a season. What actually limits where it fruits isn't cold hardiness but winter chill - it needs a solid stretch of cold to break bud, and a mild winter can leave a perfectly healthy plant fruitless. Summer heat is a second constraint, since it grows best as an understory shrub shaded through the hottest part of the day.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 4–6
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Moist
Vertical layer
Shrub- Soil pH
- 6–7
- Plant type
- Perennial
- Mature height
- 36 in
- Mature spread
- 4 ft
- Plant spacing
- 3–5 ft
- Root type
- Fibrous-shallow
- Spread pattern
- None
Keep exploring
Similar plants
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American Beautyberry
Callicarpa americana
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American Black Currant
Ribes americanum
American black currant is a multi-stemmed deciduous shrub native to the cooler parts of eastern and central North America, from Alberta to…
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American Hazelnut
Corylus americana
American Hazelnut is a thicket-forming shrub that bears small, thick-shelled nuts good raw or cooked, and it pollinates itself, so a single…
Shrub · USDA 4–9
American Plum
Prunus americana
American Plum forms dense thorny thickets by suckering from its own roots, spreading itself into a hedge across most of temperate North…
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Aronia Purple
Aronia x prunifolia
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Beaked Hazelnut
Corylus cornuta
Beaked Hazelnut bears the best-tasting wild hazelnut in North America, with a shell thin enough to crack by hand, unlike the American…
Shrub · USDA 4–8
The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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