Cape Gooseberries

I learnt my lesson last year when my tomatoes got blossom end rot.  This year the soil has plenty of calcium :)

My first harvest of cocktail tomatoes

My cocktail tomato plants (more like bushes) are all producing madly - all of the cocktail tomato plants are self-seeded from last year.  The large heirloom tomatoes are a bit slow - but I don't mind as we have more than enough to keep us going at the moment.  I would also prefer them to ripen closer to winter - that way I can use the Rosie to preserve them.  I battled initially to get them to grow - well, that and the ruddy slugs kept eating them...

I saved all of the shells from the eggs we ate
over the past year...

 ...even though they had a good border of crushed egg shells. 

...and got RMan to crush them with his great
clodhoppers, before sprinkling them generously
on the soil around the tomato plants.
In my crop rotation, I decided this year to
grow my tomatoes in our repurposed
tyres - filled with alpaca poo.  They are
working a treat - the plants are all huge
and doing very well :)

As I was harvesting the cocktail tomatoes I passed a self-seeded Cape Gooseberry bush which is growing next to my shadecloth veggie hut and noticed that the time (and fruit) was ripe.

S'funny, I don't often see anyone else mention growing gooseberries - they are dead easy to grow, and provide a wonderfully tart jam / sauce.

So, for those of you who don't have gooseberries in your garden, here's some info.

Aha!!  I spy ripe gooseberries

It is easy to spot the gooseberries which are ripe.  The outer sheath / capsule turns brown and dry.  Harvesting gooseberries involves grabbing the capsule between your fingers and gently pulling - the fruit easily parts from the capsule

The capsule on the unripe gooseberries is green

Unripe gooseberries are in the green capsules - it won't take long for them to ripen.

Enough gooseberries in my bowl to make some
gooseberry sauce

Remove the remaining, stubborn capsule(s) from the fruit...

The gooseberries sans the capsule

...give the fruit a quick rinse...

Gooseberries are high in pectin and don't take
long to soften

...pop them in a pot with some water and sugar, and in literally 10 - 15 minutes, you have a perfect sauce to dribble over your ice cream.  I didn't measure the quantities, as I was making gooseberry sauce to put on ice cream after dinner. The sugar was added to taste.

Gooseberry sauce, and jam, are a sweet but tart treat.

The seeds inside the gooseberries are very fertile
 and produce offspring easily.  In fact, if you don't
keep an eye out, they can become a pest

I love the delicate, flimsy and extremely fragile capsule that enfolds the gooseberry - it becomes paper thin and crisp as the fruit ripens.  I know I can use them for some craft - I just need to put my thinking cap on... :) 

I wish the gooseberry capsule was
a tad bigger.  There is a craft out
there somewhere which would benefit
from the gooseberry capsule :)

If the capsues were bigger they would make adorable tea light candle holders I reckon.