Well that was an interesting week of weather! With luck the next week will be a bit less extreme.
Last week I discussed the advantages of growing apple at home. Although you can grow apples in a very small garden, if you are really stuck for space, or you want something that you can’t buy easily in shops, why not plant currants or gooseberries. When was the last time you saw fresh blackcurrants for sale in the shops?
Each mature bush will produce a couple of kilos of fruits, when established, but the great thing about them is that just a few fruits can be added to dishes and you can freeze them as they ripen to make jams later. I pick and freeze some blackcurrants to make apple and blackcurrant jam in autumn. Just a few make a big difference to stewed apples too.
All these fruits are small shrubs, up to 1m high and wide. They will grow in any soil provided it is not waterlogged and although they will grow in some shade, they are best if grown where they get sun for at least half the day. They can be grown in pots but they will need regular feeding and watering. If you do grow then in pots always use John Innes No. 3 compost and not multipurpose.
Blackcurrants
Blackcurrants are easy to grow. They are upright bushes and they crop best on the one-year shoots that grew the previous year. Subsequently they are usually pruned immediately after cropping, cutting down the fruited stems and leaving the new, upright shoots. In fact you can prune and pick at the same time, pruning off all the shoots with fruits and picking them off at a table. There are lots of varieties, all quite similar but some, such as ‘Ebony’ have extra large and sweet fruits. Some are bred to flower late, so the flowers escape late-spring frosts but that should not be a major consideration in this area.
Blackcurrants do better than most fruits in partial shade.
They can get mildew, which is more unsightly than serious. The worst pest is big bud mite but if you buy healthy new plants and do not have old, affected plants, you should never be troubled by this.
Red currants
Red currants are a neglected fruit but possibly the most beautiful. I can think of nothing more spectacular than ripe redcurrants lit by the sun. Like all soft fruits, they are very tempting to birds and need to be netted, especially in rural areas, as my photo demonstrates! Like white and pink currants, they crop on older shoots so they are pruned differently to blackcurrants. Shorten long new growth in autumn or winter because most of the flower bids are produced in clusters at the base of the new growth.
Pink and white currants are simply forms of red currants but I think they are slightly sweeter and less ‘difficult’ to eat fresh than redcurrants. They are also worth growing at home because they are impossible to buy in shops.
These currants do not suffer from many pests apart from birds eating the fruit. Red Blister aphid is the most common pest which lives on the underside of the leaves and causes the leaves to pucker and turn red. It is more unsightly than serious and you can prune off the shoots tips, if affected, which will do some pruning and get rid of the pest.
Gooseberries
Because the fruits form quite early in the summer, gooseberries were traditionally picked when unripe and I used to dread eating them – even with lashings of custard. They are so mouth-puckeringly acid. But when I grew my own and let them ripen I discovered they can be as sweet as honey. Gooseberry bushes are very prickly but you can now get ‘thornless’ varieties that make picking much more simple – though even thornless kinds usually have the odd spine that will catch you out. Even so, it is traditional to prune the bushes so the centre is ‘open’ like a ‘goblet’ shape to make picking easier. This type of pruning also helps to dissuade the most serious pest – gooseberry sawfly. This fly lays eggs on the plant and the grubs will munch off all the leaves in a week! So be alert in late spring for these.
Otherwise gooseberries are simple to grow and you can get varieties with green, gold and red fruits. A single bush will produce several kilos of fruit and they make the best jam. Or freeze them as they ripen and combine with other fruits that ripen later to make mixed fruit jam or purees.
Jostaberry
I need to mention one special berry. The Jostaberry is a hybrid of a gooseberry and a blackcurrant. Many years ago when I did gardening work for a lady in Oxted I had to look after a Worcesterberry. It too is a cross of the two berries but I never understood why anyone grew it – it is prickly and has small black fruits – the worst of both its parents! But the Jostaberry is thornless and has abundant black fruits, larger than blackcurrants – the best of both parents. It is a large, hardy shrub, about 1.5m high and wide and if you like making jam and puddings and only have room for one fruit bush, it is probably the one I would recommend.
You can plant all these fruits now. Before planting them, improve the soil by digging in compost. The plants will remain productive for at least ten years and will start to crop in one or two years. When you discover how wonderful its is to pop into the garden and pick a few fruits you will wonder why you had not planted them earlier!