Excitement was palpable. DNA analysis was attempted, but unfortunately, the plant turned out to be a mislabeled ‘Leveller’—a good gooseberry, but not the Anna. If you are an heirloom hunter and you miraculously locate a cutting of an authentic Anna Ralphs, or if a nursery finally manages to micropropagate a surviving specimen, here is how you would treat it.
Her specialty? The gooseberry ( Ribes uva-crispa ). anna ralphs gooseberry
It is demanding. You need a deep, moisture-retentive but free-draining loam. pH must be between 6.0 and 6.8. Add copious amounts of well-rotted manure in the autumn before planting. Excitement was palpable
Anna’s mutant was different. The berry was larger than a cherry, pale golden-pink like a sunset, and crucially, hairless. In her diary (entry dated July 12, 1861), she wrote: Her specialty
Why the obsession? Because taste-test accounts from the Victorian era are almost erotic in their praise. One 1889 article in The Gardener’s Chronicle stated: "To eat an Anna Ralphs is to understand why the gooseberry was once the king of the cottage garden. It lacks the brutal acidity of its cousins. It is a wine-berry, a honey-berry. It should be brought back."
If they sprout, the will return from the dead. It will be a living testament to a 19th-century woman who valued flavor over size, and sweetness over shelf-life.