Published by Food Products Press, an imprint of Haworth Press, 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY, 13904-1580.
Softcover, 6 x 8.25, 266 pp, illustrated with line drawings.
ISBN 1-56022-297-2.$34.95. 2005.
http://www.haworthpress.com
(Price/availability info may have changed since original publication of review.)
First and foremost, this book is written for commercial growers and for university- type researchers. The authors assume that the reader will possess some background with currants and gooseberries, or at the very least will be more than a backyard or hobby grower.
In short, it is meant as a reference book, not for light reading. Used for that purpose, it succeeds well and lives up to its title. There is a lot of good information in the book.
That does not mean beginners can’t use the information presented, but while there are many chunks of useful information, the text can also be rather heavy going in places. This is not really surprising because it was written as a university research publication.
The book has no illustrations other
than a few line drawings. I suspect that
the publisher felt the demand for such a
specialized book would be insufficient to
warrant the production expense of color
photos. Even so, pictures of varieties and
diseases would have been a real plus.
One section I was personally glad
to see was the chapter on breeding new
varieties. Fruit breeding, to me at least, is
great fun. Currants and gooseberries are
small enough plants that even backyard
growers can play around with breeding a
few new ones.
Possibly because the authors are
university and government workers and
could not do anything to show favoritism, there are also no sources for any of
the varieties listed. It will be up to the
reader to locate the nureseries who make
those varieties available.
Culture methods are mostly conventional—
using herbicides, chemical
fertilizer, etc. However, an experienced
gardener should have no trouble converting
the methods to organics, as needed.
I found a couple of things in the book
that seemed to be glitches. The gooseberry ‘Jahn’s Prairie’ is described as being
quite spiny. Yet I have a plant of the
same variety that was taken directly from
the original material and my own plant
has almost no thorns at all. And a chart
of gooseberry varieties contained at least
two names that I would swear were not
gooseberries.
Finally, because this was a scholarly
publication, there were no personal experiences
included. Dr. Hummer is curator
of the Corvallis, Ore., branch of the
National Clonal Germplasm Repository,
which is home to the U.S. collection of
currant and gooseberry varieties. Unless
she is sick of tasting so many varieties,
it would be good reading to learn something
about her personal favorites when
she’s out nibbling in the “patch.”
Got gooseberries and currants? Make a space on the shelf for this book. You’ll check back with it over and over.