Original Jostaberry Plants

Original Jostaberry Plants

Jostaberry is a complex hybrid of blackcurrant, Ribes nigrum, European gooseberry, Ribe uva-crispum, and American gooseberry, Ribes divaricatum. It has the larger size of the gooseberry, the rich colour of the currant, and the flavour progresses from the former to the latter as it ripens. It is a thornless, vigorous, disease resistant and productive plant that copes well in the shade of trees, making it a real hit with food forest owners.

Features:

• Blackcurrant x Gooseberry hybrid
• Shade tolerant
• Thornless
• Vigorous & very disease resistant
• Young fruit are ideal for jams and other cooked delights
• Fully ripe fruit are sweet, great with cream
• Freezes well
• Hardy, but flowers may need cover from late spring frost
• Yields up to 5kg
• To 2m

Growing Jostaberries

Remarkably shade tolerant, they are quite hungry feeders and love manure and top quality mulches. The plants themselves are fully hardy, but their flowers can be ruined by late spring frosts, so be prepared with horticultural fleece to protect them.

Prune out the most productive wood when it is three or four years old, and remove ingrowing new stems to maintain an open centred bush. Jostas are also great for training against a wall.  

Did You Know? 

Following early British attempts to breed a thornless gooseberry in the late 1800's that led to the unproductive Ribes × culverwelli, work on this complicated hybrid began in Germany in 1926, and the early generations of promising plants were almost all destroyed by Allied carpet bombing in WWII. Eight survived the war, and further refinement led to the original Josta being released in 1977, and it is still the most widely sold cultivar today. The name Josta, pronounced "yosta" at home, is made from the German for blackcurrant and gooseberry, johannisbeere and stachelbeere. 

The fruit does not lend itself to machine harvesting, which is why it is not commonly found in shops.

There is a very similar hybrid from the USA called ORUS 8 (the best in the series, apparently), which has thorns.