i need some help with gooseberries.?

Do you not eat things after you cook them then?

Interesting.

Gooseberry's grow wild in the Clay soils of the Pacific North West U.S.. Your plant will do very well in clay as that is it's natural soil.. The wild ones around my house get up to the diameter of a Euro coin. The size of the berry will depend on the amount of water, nutrients, sunshine that the plant receives.

It is normal for the bush to look like a bunch of stalks with thorns all over them. Even the berrys will have a few thorns sticking out of them. The bush should have some leaves, but not as many as one would expect a bush to have.

You can eat the berries raw or use them in cooking to make pies, jams, jellies, or anything that you would use any other berry. When ripe, they are very sweet and you just wipe the thorns off and pop them in your mouth.

First, don't worry. Clay soil contains a lot of nutrients - it's just that it can either be soggy or dry out and be rock hard but some plants don't mind. My gooseberries do fine on my clay soil. If your bushes are producing fruit and have green leaves then they are obviously quite happy and healthy. If some fruits drop off before maturity it is just that there are too many of them but make sure they have enough water. If you want you can water them with a feed such as MiracleGro but it isn't necessary.

Most red gooseberries do tend to be sweeter than the green ones and are therefor suitable for eating straight off the bush - they are called dessert gooseberries. The only way you will know for sure is to try one when it looks ripe i.e. is big and fat and not rock hard. You can of course still cook them if you want but they won't need as much sugar added as you would need to do for the green ones.

If fruits are already starting to grow it should be okay for this year.

The fruits may not be brilliant quality however, so even if you have plenty of sunshine and they are dessert fruits they may be sour this year.

Once it has gone dormant in the autumn, dig it up, (remember to dig a good distance from the stem and about the same depth as the height) When you have gently removed it, dig the same depth again as the original hole, and half fill with rich compost or well rotted manure. Loosen as much of the clay soil from the roots as you can without damaging them. Put it back in the hole and fill in with more compost.

You should get a good crop of gooseberries next year - and actually discover whether they are eaters or cookers.