Currants - black, red and white

Growing Currants – ribes nigrum [blackcurrants] , ribes rubrum – [red and whitecurrants]

Currants – one of our most prolific and useful of the summer crops includes the most popular blackcurrant, redcurrant and whitecurrant.

When I first took over my plot I inherited several blackcurrant bushes, a redcurrant bush and a gooseberry bush. In spite of my best efforts with feeding, weeding, pruning, mulching – the blackcurrants continues to provide heavy crops of tiny fruits – a pain to harvest and unpleasant to eat. I eventually decided that there was no reason to hang on to effectively unproductive bushes. I replaced them with bushes which are now providing me with fruits which are almost grape-sized and delicious

Sowing and Growing

Currant bushes are best planted as bare-root bushes when they are dormant – between October and April though, in milder parts of the country they may not have gone into their dormant time by October and may have started to grow by April. Don’t consider planting when the ground is frozen.

Buy from an experienced provider who will supply you with certified stock.

You can also buy container-grown bushes which can, technically, be planted at any time of the year though, avoid planting when the ground is very wet or extremely dry during drought conditions or when they are cropping.

The plants are fairly tolerant of the type of soil but, prefer free draining, fertile slightly acid ground in a sunny sheltered position. Although it is tempting to plant new small bushes quite closely together to ‘pack-in’ as many as possible, remember as the bushes grow they will spread out. Allow, at least, 1 - 1½ metres between the bushes.

Prepare the ground well beforehand – clear all perennial weeds, including their roots. Dig in lots of manure/compost to the site several weeks before planting. Dig a hole at least twice that of the root ball or the bare roots when spread out. Fill in the hole with a mixture of well rotted manure and compost and the indigenous soil. Water well when planted. If planting bare root bushes, it is a good idea to [unpackage them immediately, if bought from a supplier on line], soak the roots in water for an hour before planting and ‘heel’ in well once planted.

Pot grown shrubs can, theoretically, be planted at any time though, most good suppliers won’t sell them when inappropriate. If you are planting from container grown – dig a hole at least twice that of the root ball [see above], tease out the roots from the rootball especially if the plant is ‘pot bound’ [the roots have taken up the whole of the pot space available and have twined round upon themselves forming a tight root ball].

Weed around the bushes by hand. If you use a hoe you run the risk of gashing the stem, allowing diseases into the plants. Mulch well around the plants in the autumn.

Once you have established bushes, you can increase your stock by taking hardwood cuttings from your own bushes in autumn – only take cuttings from healthy strong bushes.

Prune your bushes during the dormant season from October to March. Cut out old wood from the bushes and any diseased or weak stems – remember that blackcurrants fruit on new seasons stems but both redcurrants and whitecurrants fruit on old wood. If you remove all of the old wood on these bushes you will have no crop in the following year. Every few years it is a good idea to remove about a third of the old branches to encourage new growth. In pruning, try to encourage the bush to be compact but open, to allow the light into the bush and for ease of harvesting. Both redcurrants and whitecurrants can be grown as cordons if you are short of space.

Types and Varieties

The usual seed and plant providers will only give a limited range of fruit bushes. For blackcurrants the most popular are Ebony and Ben Connan.

For whitecurrants, you are likely to be offered Blanco and for Redcurrants Rovada seems to be the winner These are all good varieties and have been chosen for their popularity and reliability. In particular blackcurrant Ebony is an excellent dessert fruit and is sweet enough to eat straight from the bush.

However, you may be looking for something specific – disease resistance, bushes which will crop at different times of the season to extent the harvest, heavy cropping for preserves, juicy fruits for making juice.

It is better to try specialist growers for these different qualities.

Chris Bowers & Sons – www.chrisbowers.co.uk

Ken Muir – www.kenmuir.co.uk

Welsh Fruit Stocks – www.welshfruitstocks.co.uk

Pomona Fruits – www.pomonafruits.co.uk

Deacon’s Nursery – www.deaconsnurseryfruits.co.uk

Harvesting and Storing

Currants make the most wonderful, flavoursome and versatile jams and jellies which can be inspirational in both sweet and savoury contexts.

Like most fruit and vegetables, they are at their best when eaten fresh but, they can be frozen successfully – one of the few allotment products I am happy to preserve and freeze.

Nutritional Value

Excellent source of	Useful amounts	Traces
Blackcurrants A Vitamin C superfood – it contains well more than the RDA of Vit C Redcurrants and whitecurrants Vitamin C	Iron, potassium, manganese Dietary fibre Vitamin K, Dietary fibre, iron, manganese	Vitamins – Vitamin A and E, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, B6 Minerals –  magnesium, calcium, phosphorus, zinc, copper Vitamin A and E, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, B6, folate Minerals – potassium calcium, magnesium, zinc, copper
These berries are low in sodium, cholesterol and saturated fat

Pests and Diseases

Birds  are a major pest with red and white currants and unless they are well protected by netting they will clear all the fruit from the bushes before you will consider it ripe enough to harvest. They can also eat blackcurrants but, I have found that, on our allotments field, they seem to prefer other, easier and sweeter fruit. Except for a bush which is inside my fruit cage anyway, I don’t net my blackcurrant bushes.

Big Bud – on Blackcurrants can be major problem especially on allotments where it can be endemic. Caused by a mite which lives in the leaf buds, the enlarged buds fail to develop. Remove the buds and burn them. If whole branches are infected it will be necessary to remove and destroy the branches. In severe cases, remove the bushes and replace with new stock n a different place. However, if this pest in present on your plot, it will also be present on your neighbours’ bushes and will re-infect your new bushes. Having spent several years trying to eradicate this pest from my bushes I now largely ignore it.

Gooseberry Saw fly – These will attack redcurrant and whitecurrant bushes from mid springtime onwards. The small caterpillars will strip the leaves. If there are only a few, you can remove them by hand – check the underside of the leaves carefully as well as the tops. If you have lots of bushes, the foliage is dense or you have a serious infestation it might be necessary to spray with insecticide before the numbers build up too much. There are several organic pesticides on the market – try Py Solution.

Cooking and Preserving Blackcurrants - and a whinge!

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 Check out my new website for more information on growing and recipes
Cooking with and preserving Fruit – Blackcurrants

I really do recommend rooting out old and unproductive blackcurrant bushes. I have a row of five that I inherited when I took over my plot. I have pruned them carefully over the last few years, manured them, cut out the branches infected with ‘big-bud’ – (and burnt them – big-bud is caused by a mite which gets into the small growing buds. The growth then fails in these buds and is apparent by an over-fat bud which fails to develop.) I was told it was endemic on our plots but, none of my modern varieties has been infected – albeit 10 metres away. These pampered bushes have not rewarded me. They do produce fruit but, it is small, fiddly to pick and gives that nasty hard fruit I so remember from my childhood which put me off the dreadful crunchy, seedy blackcurrant jam we always had. Let’s face it strawberries were so much easier to grow, faster to pick and the jam was yummy.

However, apart from jam, strawberries do not preserve well – they are best enjoyed when fresh and anticipated with excitement each summer.

Blackcurrants, on the other hand have lots of uses when fresh and preserve easily through a variety of methods. They have strong flavour which works well with other red wine and herbs in both sweet and savoury dishes.

Try:

Blackcurrant pie

Blackcurrant crumble

Blackcurrant muffins

Frozen blackcurrants

Blackcurrant jus to serve with savoury dishes(can be made from frozen berries)
Blackcurrant jam

                                                     Blackcurrant jelly

                                                     Blackcurrant sorbet

                                                     Mixed with cereals - muesli or oats for breakfast

                                                     Why not just eat them straight from the bush?

Blackcurrants are definitely one of the ‘superfoods’ and are cheap and easy to grow. If you buy just one bush, it is easy to take and establish cuttings to create new bushes for future years ( expect to wait a couple of years for results – more later). I was tempted to list all the vitamins and minerals they contain but, resisted. Really there is not a lot missing. Do remember that, although an excellent source of Vitamin C, this will be destroyed on cooking.

Blackcurrants are easily frozen - remove any leaves, stalks or pieces of twig. Wash and store into shallow lidded freezer containers - freeze quickly. They will taste great all winter - unless you eat them first of course!

Preserves:-

Blackcurrant Jam

2 kilos(4lb) blackcurrants

1 litre ( 2 pts) water (or enough to barely cover the fruit)

3 kilos sugar

Method

·         Remove all leaf bits, twigs and stalks and wash the fruit.

·         Put the fruit into a preserving pan with the water and cook very gently until all the fruit is soft and well broken down. The skins need to be soft. Stir frequently to ensure the fruit is not sticking to the pan.

·         Add the sugar and over a very gentle heat, stir continuously until all of the sugar has dissolved.

·         Boil briskly until the setting point is reached ( use a sugar thermometer or place a spoonful on a saucer in a cool place, until it wrinkles when pushed gently with your finger tip.)

·         In the meantime – place sterilised pots into a warm oven to heat ( cold pots will break if hot jam is added to them).

·         Place the pots on a wooden surface or board then pot the jam ( a jam funnel is useful). Cover and label.

 Blackcurrant jelly

2 kilos (4lbs) blackcurrants

Enough water to barely cover the fruit

Sugar – see below

Method

·         Wash the fruit and remove any pieces of leaves or small twigs – stalks can stay in.

·         Put the fruit into a preserving pan with the water and cook very gently until all the fruit is soft and well broken down. The skins need to be soft. Stir frequently to ensure the fruit is not sticking to the pan.

·         Pour the pulp into a scalded jelly bag and strain overnight – don’t be tempted to squeeze the jelly bag – it will make your jelly clouded for little extra juice.

·         Measure the liquid and add ½ kilo (1 lb) sugar for every 1 litres ( 2 pts) liquid.

·         Put the liquid and the sugar into a preserving pan and heat gently – stirring regularly until the sugar has all dissolved.

·         Boil the jelly briskly until setting point has been reached.

·         Pot up into hot sterilised jars and label.

Do try the brilliant recipe below for blackcurrant sorbet:-

Black Currant Sorbet – converted from  Food.com

500 - 600 g black currants

1 lemon, juice of

14.79 ml egg white ( approx 1 Tblsp or the white of 1 medium egg)

 sprig of mint(to garnish)

Method

Prep Time: 1 hr

Total Time: 4 hrs

In a small saucepan over medium-high heat, bring the sugar and 1/2 cup of water to a boil, stir until the sugar dissolves. Boil the syrup for 2 minutes, then remove the pan from the heat and set aside to cool.

1.      Remove the black currants from the stalks by pulling them through the tines of a fork.

2.      In a blender, process the black currants and lemon juice until smooth. Alternatively, chop the black currants coarsely, then add the lemon juice. Mix in the sugar syrup.

3.      Press the puree through a sieve to remove the seeds.

4.      Pour the puree into a non-metallic, freezer proof dish. Cover the dish with plastic wrap or a lid, and freeze until the sorbet is almost firm, but still a little slushy.

5.      Cut the sorbet into pieces and put into the blender. Process until smooth, then with the machine running, add the egg white and process until well blended. Transfer the sorbet back into the dish, and freeze until almost firm. Chop the sorbet again and process until smooth. ( I know this seems like a lot of processing, but it makes the sorbet very smooth, and is really necessary).

6.      7 Serve immediately or freeze, tightly covered, for up to 1 week. Allow to soften 5-10 minutes at room temperature before serving, garnish with mint leaves.

I really do need to have a whinge about a very well known and well awarded seed company in the UK (Thompson&Morgan). They provide products and services ideas that have been missed by other companies. They have received awards for the on-line service they provide yet, it seems to me that, since they have started receiving all these awards, the quality of their products and service has seriously deteriorated. In the last 12 months I think I have phoned or emailed them to complain about the quality of some product or other in every order I’ve received. I’m sure their computer has it on record that I am ‘Complain Central’, yet I have never ever had reason to complain to any of the other companies I regularly buy seeds or plants from.

Today I received an order I had requested to replace plants I had put in the compost bin as they had grown too long and thin to be viable, because of the long very dry spring making the ground untillable and therefore unplantable (in this case it was brassicas). The plant plugs I received were every bit as bad, or worse. I had also bought leek plants as my own were not good. They have arrived very yellowed and they look, like the brassicas, as though they have been in transit for a week or more – yet the records show that they have been in transit for less than 48 hours – not time enough for them to have got into this condition through being stuck in a parcel for a long time. In fairness to T&M, they had also sent me cauliflower plugs, several weeks ago which are brilliant and pepper plants a week ago which are good but really, 50% good is not good enough!

I have potted up the brassicas in any case, in the vain hope they might grow into something worth the money I paid for them! Do tell me what you think.

Harvesting and Preserving Fruit - redcurrants and gooseberries

Picking and using  - gooseberries and redcurrants

 

Well, we have now had the rain needed to wet the ground  enough to be able to till it and plant again and most of the vegetables that had been planted earlier are beginning to grow away.  So, of course, are the weeds. This year, so far, the weeds have not been too much of a problem, nor have the edges needed trimming too often but now they seem to be a bit out of control.

No worries, I won’t have to spend several hours each day carrying water – except to my polytunnel, I should have plenty of time to keep the weeds under control. But, I now have a lot of fruit to pick each time I go there. Already I have lots of tubs in the freezer of raspberries and blackcurrants. So far I have found other homes for my strawberries. I’m not a great jam eater and although I do make jams and jellies each year, I give most of it away. It seems to be quite a good year for strawberries. I have two quite large beds. The older one, which is now three years old and due to be replaced this autumn, is being particularly productive with very large fruits. I’m wondering if it is worth keeping it for another year.

The raspberries are still fruiting on last year’s canes, as soon as they have finished I will cut them out and start on the crop from the new canes. I have one row which, although the plants look lush and healthy produces very poor fruit. I inherited the canes when I took over the plot and this winter I will remove it. With modern varieties of fruit there is no need to keep underperforming stock. When I took over the plot I bought some new canes – a summer fruiting variety and an autumn fruiting variety. For the life of me I can’t remember what I bought, which is a shame as they have been excellent.

I will do the same with a row of blackcurrant bushes which, although I have pruned, fertilised and mulched them well, they continue to produce small, fiddly to pick fruits which, this year, I have just left for the birds. I notice they don’t seem to want them either – aren’t they becoming choosy?

While strawberries and raspberries will continue to fruit for some time, you only have one chance with some of the fruit. Gooseberries, redcurrants and blackcurrants really need to be picked when they are ready and there is no second or third crop to go back to if you don’t catch the first round though, to be fair blackcurrants don’t all ripen at once.

You will probably have a couple of weeks in which to ‘catch’ them but, once picked you have to be prepared to do something with them. Yesterday I picked all my redcurrants and about half of my gooseberries. The quantity of redcurrants is a little disappointing. Although I only have one bush, it is enormous and for the last few years has provided me with a bucket of the fruit. I do think that the pigeons and blackbirds have managed to find their way into my fruit cage and have had more than their share. I always leave a few small gaps just in case they do get in and can’t escape in an emergency – fox or cat. This year I’d say I have a large bowlful. I love redcurrant jelly to serve with all sorts of roast meat and while I know it is a bit unimaginative, that is what I will do again this year. If I had picked enough of them I would have frozen several tubs for winter use. It won’t be too bad though, I still have a few pots left from my bumper harvest last year.

Check on the website link on the top right-hand corner for recipes for jams and jellies – see the preserving pages.

While I may not have had an enormous crop of redcurrants, I certainly have a lot of gooseberries. While they are delicious, they are also quite fiddly to prepare. If you are going to make jam or jelly with them or, make pies or crumble they can be slightly under-ripe. For eating fresh or for gooseberry fool they are probably better really ripe.

They are quite a versatile fruit and are excellent for preserving to keep for winter use.

Gooseberries make a wonderful jelly – similar to crab-apple jelly but, a bit more flavoursome. It is also delicious served with roast meat dishes with finely chopped mint or rosemary added.

If you are going to make jelly you can skip all the tedious process of topping and tailing them (removing the stalks and the remains of the flowers at the other end). However, for jam, desserts and for freezing these must be removed.

Wash the fruit (always with gooseberries), top and tail them and pack loosely into a shallow lidded freezer container or, try dry-freezing them. Spread them out on kitchen-paper on a tray and freeze as individual fruits. When frozen, they can be packed into freezer bags. Easy!

Do keep some of them to make a gooseberry pie or a crumble. I know it is summertime but these traditional hot puddings are always delicious. Serve with vanilla ice-cream, crème fraîche or single cream – what a treat.

Summer Fruit

Well! Isn't that just like the thing! In April the weather was like June weather and all the crops were rushing ahead of themselves.

I grow lots of strawberries and have two fairly large 'patches'  - each two metres by three and a half.  It was looking good. I was preparing for a bumper crop and lots of jam making. This week - at the end of May - the weather has been described by our weather-men as being more like the end of October. I did harvest some strawberries - about a small punnet. They are not that vibrant red colour we expect but, are sweet and soft and ready to eat anyway - don't leave them if yours are like that, waiting for them to get redder. They will sit there until they rot or the birds and slugs will have them instead. However, the jam making will have to wait a while longer.

My raspberries are also beginning to ripen - today I picked a small bowl, a VERY small bowl. These are from last year's canes. As I have said in a previous Blog, I don't cut my canes back at the end of the year (neither summer nor autumn fruiting and I really don't understand why this is done!), I do take  the tops of them, for the sake of tidyness, leaving them about a metre tall, or perhaps a bit taller. Those canes are now in the process of giving me a crop, well in advance of this year's canes. The best raspberries in the UK are grown in Scotland where it is much colder than the south west of England. I don't expect that our present 'cold' snap will do any harm to my raspberry crop. But, do watch for yours ripening. Although birds are not a big problem for me with strawberries and raspberries, they will certainly take them if there is a shortage of anything else to eat.

Redcurrants and blackcurrants are now starting to colour-up. If we can see this, so will the birds and will take them all as well as your gooseberries before you have a chance to harvest them. If you really want these crops it is essential to net them. I have seen some of my fellow plot holders drape a piece of net over the tops of their currant bushes in the expectation of deterring blackbirds and/or pigeons from taking these crops. I have also seen these birds under the nets, tucking happily into the fruit until they are almost too heavy to get off the ground. I'm sure I have said this in every Blog lately but, net the bushes securely while leaving a gap for the birds to escape if attacked by a fox or a cat - that may sound like a contradiction, and it is but.........! I really do like the birds too.

Has anyone else noticed that we have more honeybees around this year? In previous years, while I saw lots of bees, they were bumble bees, solitary bees,though few honey bees. On my group of allotment fields we now have four beekeepers and interestingly a 'top-bar bee-keeper'. Do check out the information on this on the link to the allotment website. It is captivating!

Increasingly, we are having to net a wider variety of crops. This morning I had to cover my salad bed as the birds - I'm guessing pigeons - have stripped several of my young Romaine lettuces. I won't starve because of it as I grow a lot more than I need but, I don't want to lose my whole crop. Net is expensive and systems for lifting it above the crops is also expensive. Today I had to use the fine net I hate to protect my crop but, I will replace it as soon as possible as the birds catch their feet in the fine net and can die a miserable death unless we are there to rescue them.

I picked a small vase of sweet-peas from my plot today - sown in the autumn and over-wintered in my polytunnel, they are actually quite hardy plants. I planted them out in March and although they were slow to establish, they are now starting to flower. And! what an amazing fragrance they give to my house, even this little posy. If you do grow them, they need lots of feeding (best planted into well manured ground at the start),but, do keep cutting the flowers and removing the seed pods of any you might have missed or they will stop flowering.

Check out the website for recipes on jam-making, jelly making, chutneys and pickles

soft fruit - raspberries, strawberries: bush fruit - blackcurrants, redcurrants, gooseberries

Soft and Bush Fruit

All the fruit is magnificent, so far, this spring. The plum tree is flowering and already dropping its petals – my favourite, Victoria,(suitable for eating, for desserts and for preserves). My pear tree, which I almost killed last year is covered with flowers, (this tree, planted two years ago, was also covered with bloom last year at this time but, then failed to thrive. This surprised me as the other fruit trees in the same area were growing well. A neighbour pointed out to me that, perhaps, just maybe – the mint which surrounded the pear tree, was a metre high and very lush , might possibly be taking all the nutrients and water from the tree. Of course he was right but, what a shame to have to dig out all that wonderful mint – and the bees were loving it. Still, the pear tree came first. It did recover, just, and this year I will make sure the mint doesn’t make such an extravagant takeover manoeuvre. I am not any sort of expert on tree fruit having started with them only 2 years ago.

Strawberry plants, now tidied, have already got their flowers on. I have two beds (1 is now on its third year and will be dug out this autumn. The other is two years old this year and can stay for another year. I will plant another bed from runners in the autumn). I do prefer the fruit from the first year plants – they are usually huge and juicy though there are fewer of them. With each year, it seems they get smaller but, more plentiful. I plant my new runners in beds covered with porous woven matting – approx, 2 metres by 4 metres. This keeps the weeds under control and the strawberries out of the mud. To some extent it also keep slugs away as the area around the plants stays fairly dry. The disadvantage is that in years where there is not much rain, the ground can become quite dry but, even last year when there was little rain in the strawberry season, I still had an excellent crop – far too many for me to use(and they don’t freeze well). I don’t cover with net to keep birds off. I hate to see the birds caught under the net and there really are enough for them and for me. It does annoy me slightly that the blackbirds like to take a bite out of several fruits until they find the sweetest but.....!

Blackcurrants, redcurrants and gooseberries have their flower-buds opening now. Although it is important that the bees get in to pollinate the flowers, you will need to keep an eye on these when they start to ripen. Birds will not share them with you. My experience has been that pigeons and blackbirds will strip the bushes before you have a chance to pick, so – do net them- the bushes, not the birds! Pigeons are really quite clever and can find a way into the most ‘secure’ of cages. However, much as I don’t really want to share these with the enormous flocks of greedy pigeons, neither do I want to see them being caught under netting they can’t escape from. Prey to cats and foxes – I love cats and foxes, I just don’t want to catch their lunch for them.

Many of my blackcurrant plants have ‘bigbud’. You can see these enlarged leafbuds in spring, which fail to develop into fruiting stems. When I took over my plot, a few years ago, I dutifully cut out all the branches showing ‘bigbud’ and burned them (it is caused by a mite/bug, which lives in the new shoot and prevents it from developing). A neighbour asked me what I was doing. When I explained, he laughed and said that, on the allotments, ‘bigbug’ was endemic. There was no point in trying to get rid of it. Since then, I just let the bushes ‘get on with it’. I might consider replacing a few of them with modern varieties which have bigger fruit – perhaps next winter. The smaller fruited varieties - about half of the bushes I've inherited - are a nuisance to harvest unless you are desperately keen on blackcurrants. My one redcurrant bush is a real star. I discovered it under 2 metres high, of briars when I took over the plot. It provides me with a bucketful of fruit each year. I have pruned half of it out each year. Last year, it was so overladen with fruit that a couple of large branches collapsed. However, it is a wonderful amazing bush. I am in the process of taking layered cuttings from it :o) I do  however, give it a good mulching of well rotted manure each year,as with the other bush and cane fruit.

You don’t have to spend a lot of money building professional cages. I use tree posts hammered into the ground leaving about 1 and half metres above ground (it is helpful if you can actually get inside the ‘cage’ comfortably to harvest). Cover the tops of the posts with plastic bottles to prevent the posts cutting through the netting. Pin the net down with large ‘staples’ or pegs. Leave a largish hole high up for birds to escape but not suitable for access. And, hey! I don’t get it right all the time – I’m working on this. Last year, one of my cages was a mass of pale grey feathers when I arrived. I'm assuming that a fox found the same way in as a pigeon. No cat nor other bird could have produced the feathery devastation presented.

Raspberries – now this is a plant I am curious about! And I would be really, really happy for someone to enlighten me. The accepted practise, where I live, is for the previous year’s productive raspberry canes to be cut back to the ground, leaving about 3ins(6-7cm) above ground, either in the autumn or spring. It is understood that raspberries fruit on the new season’s canes – now appearing above ground. However, in my experience, last year’s canes will also fruit this year – the flower buds are now appearing on last year’s canes. They will produce a crop May/June, before the new canes start to crop. This extends the harvesting season from May to October (depending on your varieties). My plants are not suffering from this extra crop – the canes grow to 6ft ( 2 metres) or more and are very productive. I do cut the tops off the ‘old’ canes in the autumn - more for the sake of tidiness – to about 1 metre high. It really isn't necessary to 'cage' raspberries. Although birds may take a few, bigger threats are ants and woodlice - they will destroy the fruit and the ants will sting - very nasty!

If anyone can give me their thoughts on why they are cut back before their time, I would really like to hear it. Do give your raspberry canes a good mulch of manure each autumn. If they are not productive or have very small fruit, think about replacing them. New varieties are really quite superior. Try a mixture of summer and autumn fruiting.