Gooseberry Candy

Thanks to the tireless work of breeders, the popularity of gooseberries is growing, and useful berries are increasingly appearing on the plots. The universal variety Candy has a dessert taste and allows you to use the berry in various forms. It is tasty fresh, excellent jams, jams, confitures and even marmalade are made from it.

The authorship in obtaining a wonderful variety belongs to the breeder of the South Ural Research Institute of Fruit and Vegetable and Potato Growing, B. S. Ilyin. As parental varieties he used for crossing 3-65 (Iskra and a mixture of pollen varieties Brazilian, Finik, Varshavsky), as well as Smena. Approved for use in 2008.

Medium-sized straight bushes have a compressed shape and dense filling. Growing curved shoots with weak spinousness, non-pubescent, curved, of medium thickness. Young branches are covered with green skin, which over time becomes lignified. The bush is covered with medium-sized, five-lobed green leaves without pubescence, with a shiny, slightly wrinkled leathery-type surface. Shoots are poorly covered with thin, brown spines of medium length, located in the lower part. The gooseberry blooms with medium-sized, goblet-shaped, pale pink flowers, collected in a one-two-flowered inflorescence.

Advantages of the variety:

• unpretentiousness;

• strong immunity;

• self-fertility and compactness;

• winter hardiness and frost resistance;

• low tenoniness, dessert taste, presentation, the possibility of growing in areas of risky farming.

Of the shortcomings, it is worth paying attention to the exactingness of the soil, but correct planting and adherence to agrotechnical rules will subsequently allow you to get excellent and stable yields.

Large and medium-sized rounded-oval, one-dimensional berries weighing from 3 to 6 grams are colored in a caramel-pink shade. Fruits with a small number of seeds are covered with a skin of medium thickness with slight pubescence.

The berry has a sweet dessert taste with a slight sourness. The fruits contain 8.6% sugars and 55.2 mg /% vitamin C. Gooseberries have the highest possible tasting score - 5 points.

The variety belongs to the late ripening category.

Candy has high yields - from 1.8 to 6.2 kg are harvested from one bush, an average of 6 to 20.6 tons are obtained per hectare. The yield of the variety largely depends on the region of cultivation. Adapted to temperate climates, only in such conditions can gooseberries reach their full potential.

The variety is intended for cultivation in the East Siberian and West Siberian regions.

For planting, select well-lit places with a neutral level of acidity, protection from northern winds and cold drafts. One of the advantages of the variety is its indifference to the position of groundwater, since the root system of Candy is located near the surface, at a depth not exceeding 30 cm.Choose two-year-old seedlings, on which no more than five buds are left, cutting off everything else.

The optimal size of the planting pit is approximately the volume of a bucket. The removed soil is enriched with 50 g of superphosphate, 40 g of potassium sulfate, half a glass of wood ash and ¼ a bucket of humus. The root collar is buried 3-4 cm, the soil is compacted and watered, mulching after that with a layer of peat. The distance between bushes is 1.5 m, at least two meters between rows.

The variety has a high self-fertility and does not need additional pollination, however, if desired, you can use the cross-pollination method. All planting care consists of traditional agricultural techniques.

• Watering. The superficial root system is not able to independently extract moisture at a depth, therefore regular irrigation is important for gooseberries. At the same time, the bushes react most gratefully to rain or settled warm water. During flowering, watered weekly, then the frequency is reduced, except for drought. Plentiful autumn watering helps the plants overwinter.

• Pruning. Sanitary pruning is carried out in early spring, when frozen, diseased, dry and deformed shoots are removed. Shoots older than 7 years are removed. Such techniques relieve the bushes from thickening, stimulate the growth of young shoots.

Do not ignore weeding, loosening or mulching, adding additional nutrients starting 3 years after planting.

Gooseberry Candy has good health and high resistance to many diseases, including American powdery mildew, anthracnose and others. Resistance to septoria is slightly lower. In order to avoid damage to bushes by pests and diseases, preventive treatments with insecticides and fungicides are required.

The variety shows excellent winter hardiness and drought resistance.