Help with gooseberries

malebolge

My 4 red gooseberries have been decimated by what I think is gooseberry sawfly (never saw any, but looking at pictures they've definitely been eaten and the damage looks identical). My fault, I suppose, health hasn't been brilliant and I didn't check on them as I normally do. Not a single leaf remains; just the stalks of leaves, but the the fruit has ripened as normal, albeit a bit smaller than usual.


I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to do with them now. All the sites I look at advise on how to prevent the sawflies, but not how to look after the plants afterwards. I grow them in tubs (as I do everything with being in a wheelchair). I'm not sure if the soil will be infected. Most importantly - do I trim the branches now, leave them and trim them as normal, or will they not survive having no foliage? The fact that the fruits have grown gives me some hope - they're a lovely tasting gooseberry but I don't know their name so I really don't want to lose them.


I'd really appreciate any advice, thanks.

Davesnave

It happens. I'd be busy at work and not see the damage till Friday evening, back in the days when I had gooseberries.

The plant will be fine. New leaves will soon appear, and you can give it a high nitrogen feed to help with that. Prune later. The sawfly.....err....flies, so not much you can do except stay vigilant and spray with a pyrethrum based insecticide. There are nematodes for this, but knowing the likely cost of those, they'd be expensive gooseberries!

Farway

AS usual Dave is right, the bushes recover and fruit is unaffected. Last year mine were lace curtains, and I notice this year they've run out of gooseberry leaves & migrated across to a red currant


I'll try & be more vigilant in 2020, unlike this year after promising in 2018 I'd be on the look out earlier

A._Badger

Davesnave's advice is spot-on, The one thing I would add is don't assume they'll be back next year, Pests tend to come and go as Nature strikes all sorts of balances we are rarely aware if. I was plagued with sawfly for a couple of years then... nothing for the past few.

If you can find it, Vitax's Py is good quality pyrethrum based insecticide. I've had to lean on it to fight red spider mite this year and it has proved very effective.

forgotmyname

Growing your own always seems to have strange quirks.

On the allotment the guy 5 plots up had his sweetcorn decimated by pigeons where they did not touch mine. All i had were earwigs hiding in them. Not sure if they actually caused any damage?

I know onions are garlic are the same family, but i grew both in a patch where one would grow well and the other didn't where the following year it was the other way around.

My gooseberries took a few years to get established and always seemed to ripen the day after we went on holiday.

pompeii

Had a similar problem last year with container grown raspberries, this year I got in early and pulled of the leaves that had the little monsters on, then sprayed the plants with a Richard Jackson insecticide from QVC hubby says the local garden centre has identical stuff for less, will check that out when I need more. I have had a slight recurrence of the sawfly but as the rasps are fruiting I don't was spray them. I read somewhere that sawfly can reproduce 3 time in a season so if the gooseberry ones are the same its worth bearing that in mind

Primrose

Don't despair. A few years ago my gooseberry bushes were stripped bare by the dreaded sawfly yet the following year the leaves were back as normal and I haven't had an infestation since.

I dusted them with some dry powder. Can't remember what it was now, possibly Derris powder.

malebolge

Thanks so much for all your comments. As usual, Davesnave was correct - I've now got fresh leaves starting to appear after I used a high nitrogen feed. I'm so happy - the gooseberries, and some lovely yellow raspberries were the last birthday present my late hubby bought me just 5 days before he died. I'm going to be extra vigilant in future, and get some of the pyrethrum based insecticide too.

youngie

It is the saw fly lava that does the damage they are like a small caterpillar the lava hatch out from the ground beneath the bush I found putting rubber matting around the base of my gooseberries stopped the egg laying cycle (I used old car mats and old hot water bottles) reduced my saw fly attacks dramatically