Gooseberries and the Legendary Lucile Whitman

Lucy Whitman runs a specialty nursery in Oregon and sells a very wide selection of gooseberries and currants.

I called her phone and she answered it (!!!) and was more than happy to answer questions about gooseberries and currants.

The GREAT news is that she agrees that Crandall Currant is very resistant to heat AND she has one-gallon containers of Crandall in stock and she can ship them NOW.

Also called clove currant, this is not a black currant except in color. It ripens much later, is bigger and sweeter without the black currant muskiness. The yellow flowers in spring are spicy sweet and the bush is large (5′-6′) and open and has lovely fall color. see pic. I just got this additional info from one of my customers: The Crandall selection was from a wild stand of ribes odoratum found by a farmer west of Newton, KS in 1888.  He developed the strain, which had extra sweetness and larger berry size. The original stand is gone now and I don’t remember who sent me my original plant thirty years ago, but I got a better strain from Colorado about 20 years ago.  Some Crandalls bear better than others and because they are hard to root, I suspect that some nurseries are selling seedlings   Description from Lucile's catalog

Black Velvet gooseberry, photo credit Lucile Whitman

The good-but-not-great news is that she thinks Pixwell, Glendale and Black Velvet are good gooseberry choices for areas with high heat. The fly in the ointment is that she sells them bare-root and only ships during the dormant season. She also thinks Glendale is mildew prone so DRY heat is better than high humidity and heat for that variety.

She is almost always too busy to respond to emails but will usually respond to texts. Her texting number is Fife-oh-tree  fife-tenn OH-foh-ate-s3x Please excuse the funny spelling, I am trying to protect her from spammers.

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