Planning to add some excellent tasting Goose berries - any recommendations. Would like to have
one of each a red, yellow, dark & green variant. Also what are some of the do's & don'ts about
growing them. Wife acquire the taste for them last year.

Paul,
I tried to grow them last month. It was physalis peruviana, orange in color. Commonly known as cape gooseberries. Very easy to grow from seeds but unfortunately they have been attacked by aphids. It seems aphids took a great liking of the young leaves/shoots. Have to throw everything away.

Norhayati

I've only tried growing them once, main suggestion is to get powdery mildew resistant cultivars. I had a Hinnomake Red that was defoliated by July because mildew was so bad. It made it's way to the great compost pile in the sky.

There's a variety I've read about called Amish Red that is supposedly quite good.

I tried gooseberries once. Here's my observations.

The berries don't get very big. They hide among thorns. When you pick them a bit of stem comes off with the berry, so you have to pick over them again to clean them up. The bushes don't get very big, so you need a lot of them to get a batch worth cooking up, and there's a lot of bending over involved in picking them.. Their taste just doesn't make them worth the effort.

This was 20 years or so ago so maybe there are newer varieties that get around these problems but the ones I had became a donation to the birds in short order.

I suggest you try figs instead.

I have some white gooseberries. 
They seem to be mildew resistant and produce nicely every year with no spraying.
They can be propagated by cuttings if you are interested I can send you some?

Paul,

    I don't have any other suggestions than this: Grow some gooseberries. Sweet and tart. Smooth and crunchy. Deal with the thorns. they aren't that bad. No other taste I have ever experienced is like gooseberry. One of the strongest memories from my childhood is my mother's gooseberry pie. Can't beat it. (It's also what Snow White served the seven dwarves (in the Disney version, anyway.))

A lot depends on your zone. If you are south of 6, gooseberries are going to need afternoon shade to survive the heat. And here in the South the humidity is tough on them. I have 3 and they suffer in July/Aug.

So, if you are South of the real "gooseberry zones," have you considered Clove Currants? They are a part of the ribe family, same as both European gooseberries and Black currants. However, these are native North American plants and do very well in a wide range of zones. There is a huge one near my parent's house, probably 6ft tall by 4-5ft wide. The clove currant makes small black berries, similar in taste to a gooseberry, but the size of a blueberry. I have two cultivars in my yard. Mine are still  young, but I got a small bowl-full of berries last year and they were very good.

Again, not to sound like a broken record, but these native currants go very nicely with figs. I guess I think everything goes nicely with figs. In fact, the world just seems a little brighter with a bowl of fresh figs on the table ;-)

I live in the southeast. I am growing Josta berry, a gooseberry and currant hybrid. It is easy and low maintenance. Delicious and productive once established

I'm in South Florida and had a friend visit from up north in November who brought down some "ground cherries" that he had grown.  I later found out that the ground cherry was also called a "Cape Gooseberry".  I planted several of the seeds in November and currently have four young plants growing.  We haven't hit the warm season since I planted, so not sure how they'll do, but he said they love the heat and may even be perennial down here (although, he didn't know for sure).  The plants have already produced several fruits and, in fact, I picked and ate one off the ground this morning (yummy!).  The fruits develop in these lantern-shaped paper-like husks.  When ripe it turns from green to a yellow/orange color (similar to the color of cantaloupe) and really do taste delicious.  My plants do not, at least yet, have thorns, but they are only a few inches tall and my friend said they can get to about 4' tall.  Here's a short video on the ground cherry, which again, I believe is the same as a cape gooseberry:

I have a poorman that I got from Hartmann's a few years ago. The berries are delicious. They're pretty sweet when fully ripened. They have a kiwi-type flavor. I've had no issues with mold or parasites.

Paully,

Gooseberries don't have to be that difficult if you put in a little time setting up a trellis system. You can grow them as fans, cordons and, I'm sure, whatever other shape pleases you. You can also train them as bushes and keep them semi-ordered for easier harvest. It's only when you let them grow rampant that they are truly difficult to deal with. I know this from experience.

Nice-tasting gooseberries are, in my opinion:

Hinnomaki Red and Yellow
Invicta
Jeanne
Black Velvet (super vigorous and productive, though the berries are smallish).

Hi pauly22,
Here I can only find one strain of goose berries.
I made jam last year - and it was good.
A bit of work, because on each berry you have to cut the stem and the remaining from the flower.
I made tayberry jam -
Both goose berries and tayberrys are worth keeping - good fresh and in jam ... They don't stain .
I could have done blackberry jam - but because they tend to make stains ... I let them fall to the ground.
I'm more and more thinking about replacing the blackberries .

Paully,

I have/and had several gooseberry and currants. They grow well here, but appreciate partial shade. No problems, aphids do like like some of them and last year the fruit flies really got to them(may have been the spotted wing drosophila). Like Neil said, you can put them on a trellis if you want. That way you can grow them tall enough so you don't have to bend over as much, I had a couple Pixwell on a trellis and they preformed great. Gooseberries are labor intensive to process, like mentioned above, the stem has to be removed from each berry as well as the little flower remnants on the bottom of the berry. I am the first person in my family to grow gooseberries, so I don't have any great recipes to go off of. I made a crisp last fall, I didn't add much sugar and the sour really came out of the skins and made it difficult to enjoy, it looked and smelled really good though. Just needed more sugar. So, for me goose berries are mostly a pick a handful and eat fresh sort of thing. My daughter loves to stand at the bush and eat them one by one, been that way since she was a toddler.
Overall I think as mentioned above, sweet-tart is a good flavor reference. Every time I eat a gooseberry I think they taste exactly like small wild/heritage plums with the sweet flesh and sour skin. Gene mentioned the clove currant, it's called Crandall. Here are my thoughts on them by variety. I had many at my old house, now at my newer location I have a few.

Invicta Gooseberry- Supposed to be a big green light colored berry with good sweet flavor. My experience, not so much. Granted, it was an experiment with where I planted this bush and I planted it on the north side of the fence. This will be it's fourth year. It's low and mounding, the berries are not any bigger than your average gooseberry. The flavor has not been exceptional when ripe, but I do like them picked a little early. At the early stage they remind me of a crisp green apple. The size and flavor may be affected by the sun, but the bush still bears heavily. Aphids are kind of fond of it.

Pixwell- At my old house. Green to pink in color. Berries a distributed well along the branches, sort of one every inch or so. The berry flavor IMO is a carbon copy to the small wild or heritage plums of the mid-west. Supposed to have less thorns.

Black Velvet- Also four years old. This one I have planted out in full sun, it doesn't like that. It sets a heavy crop in the spring, but by time the temps start going up and the sun gets intense it drops more than half the berries. Berries are on the large side of medium, with purple/blue/black skin. Flavor is...good, but doesn't have blueberry notes at least that I can detect; that's one of the selling points.

Jewel- A peach colored berry from Poland. I had this one at my old house, Raintree carried it for a couple of years. It never grew well for several years, come to find out there was hollow void under the bush due to the rock terrace it was planted near. I fixed that, and the following year it finally bore a small crop. The berries were large and the best I have had yet, I couldn't really pin the flavor but it was not like any of the other gooseberries I have tasted. I sold the house the following spring and split the plant, I just had so much to do I didn't get it in the ground before it got hot and expired. Had it been smaller I would have put it in the fridge until I had time!

Crandall Currant- The native "Clove Currant", they say the yellow flowers smell like cloves. Maybe, I never noticed that, maybe when the bush gets big it's more evident. It likes to sucker a bit, but they are shallow and dig out easily, and transplant nicely. My favorite currant. I like to let them stay on the cane/branch for a long time after ripening, they develop a unique flavor that a person can really get a taste for, a frost or two never hurts either. They are still rather sour when they first turn black.

Imperial White Currant- Handsome bush, nice shape, grows strong. Bears a decent crop, said to be the sweetest white currant. It was good, 3 big seeds in every little berry. Only thing I could think of doing with it was making jelly, my wife thinks we already have too much jelly. I dug it out last spring and gave it the neighbors down the street, they said it didn't make it, should have pruned it way back. Aphids like it.

Jonkeer Vantets Red Currant- Planted at old house, never got a chance to taste it.

Black Down Black Currant- Planted at old house, never got a chance to taste it. I had higher hopes for this one.

Ben Sareck Black Currant-  Planted at old house. Grows thick and squat. Aphids like it. This one would get strange growths on leaves, not sure if it was pine blister or something else. Bears moderate to heavy. If you like the taste of vomit..then this is the berry for you. I forced myself to try it many times, with the same result. The berries are sour and leave an after taste of vomit on your palate like you threw up about 5 or 10 minutes ago. And to think, there was a breeder royalty and non propagation agreement when I purchased the vomit berry!