Invicta
The standard culinary gooseberry, grown for its resistance to American gooseberry mildew rather than its flavour. Very vigorous and very thorny. Gooseberries fruit on spurs and on the base of one-year shoots, so they are spur-pruned like an apple rather than cut to the ground like a blackcurrant.
A cultivar of Gooseberry. Everything on this page is about the cultivar; how to grow the species is on the plant page, and how big the tree gets is on the rootstock page.
Pollination
What this cultivar needs before it will set a crop.
- Self-fertility
- Self-fertile
source
Sourced guidancehigh confidence
- Royal Horticultural Society: Gooseberry — pollination
Checked 2026-08-13
- Partner
- No partner needed
source
Sourced guidancehigh confidence
- Royal Horticultural Society: Gooseberry — pollination
Checked 2026-08-13
- Ploidy
- diploid
source
Horticultural consensusmoderate confidence
- NIAB — National Institute of Agricultural Botany: Cultivar ploidy records
Checked 2026-08-13
- Partners needed
- none
Partners for Invicta, from the 2 gooseberry cultivars GrowingHQ holds
Computed by the pollination engine from the flowering groups, ploidy and recorded pairings on each record — not a hand-written list. The scope is exactly what the heading says: these are the answers that exist in this catalogue, not the answers that exist.
No partner is required
Invicta sets a crop on its own pollen. The table below is still computed, because a compatible neighbour does no harm and a grower planting two trees may want to know which pairs work.
No compatible partner in this catalogue
That is a statement about GrowingHQ’s coverage rather than about the cultivar. A nursery list will contain compatible cultivars this catalogue does not hold — the pollination mechanisms page explains how to work one out.
1 further cultivar returns no verdict, because a flowering group or an incompatibility group is not recorded on one side. The engine reports that rather than assuming a value: Hinnonmäki Red.
The fruit
- Season
- Mid-season
source
Sourced guidancehigh confidence
- Royal Horticultural Society: Gooseberry cultivars — season
Checked 2026-08-13
- Use
- Cooking, Preserving
source
Sourced guidancehigh confidence
- Royal Horticultural Society: Gooseberry cultivars — use
Checked 2026-08-13
- Keeping
- Eat within days
source
Sourced guidancehigh confidence
- Royal Horticultural Society: Gooseberry cultivars — storage
Checked 2026-08-13
The plant
- Vigour
- More vigorous than average
source
Sourced guidancehigh confidence
- Royal Horticultural Society: Gooseberry cultivars — vigour
Checked 2026-08-13
- Habit
- Spreading
source
Horticultural consensusmoderate confidence
- Royal Horticultural Society: Gooseberry cultivars — habit
Checked 2026-08-13
- Cropping
- Crops regularly
source
Sourced guidancehigh confidence
- Royal Horticultural Society: Gooseberry cultivars — cropping
Checked 2026-08-13
- Fruits on
- Spurs on older wood
source
Sourced guidancehigh confidence
- Royal Horticultural Society: Gooseberry — pruning
Checked 2026-08-13
Why that decides the pruning
Fruit forms on short stubby spurs that persist on wood two years old and older. Pruning aims to build and renew those spurs, so the framework is kept and young growth is shortened.
What it is prone to
Cultivar behaviour, not a diagnosis. Every level here is relative to other cultivars of the same species.
| Problem | This cultivar | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| Powdery mildew | Good resistanceSourced guidanceDepends on conditionshigh confidenceApplies when: Resistance is partial and specific to the pathogen strains prevalent when it was assessed. It reduces the problem; it does not remove it.
Checked 2026-08-13 | American gooseberry mildew specifically — the disease that made gooseberries difficult before this cultivar existed. |
Cultivar record reviewed 2026-08-13.