Plants with a purpose
The power of the blackcurrant is in its tart taste.
A berry with a buzz
These typically aren’t the kind of berries you steal, and then sit somewhere quiet to scoff. I remember working with my grandpa, topping and tailing huge bowls of them during lazy summers filled with swimming, haymaking, and lots of eating. Our fingers would go purple, but unlike other summer berries – one for you, one for the bowl – every blackcurrant made it safely through processing. They just weren’t quite sweet enough for us, although the newer, Nz-developed variety Sefton is an exception.
Blackcurrant jam is a different story. The most memorable combination was the rich, sweet-sour of my mother’s home-made jam, meltingly paired with whipped cream sourced from the top of the milk tank, all piled on top of fluffy, homemade pikelets.
When we landscaped our property nine years ago, blackcurrants went on my ‘musthave’ list for the new garden. My husband anticipated creating yummy blackcurrant condiments and pies. For me, it was all about memories. Neither of us thought too much about looking after them.
The blackcurrant patch of my childhood was conveniently placed beside and below the cow yard on the family farm. Sluicing manure off the yard after milking inevitably also meant sluicing green, stinky poo through the blackcurrant patch. Accidentally, we gave them near-perfect conditions.
Blackcurrants are greedy plants and benefit from high organic matter or manure, although they would prefer it not to be as fresh as what we fed them. They also are shallow-rooted and do best with frequent watering until fruit is harvested. They loved their daily water-poo drenching. The bushes ended up a tad leafy, but the blackcurrants were big, ripe and juicy.
Blackcurrants have high winter chilling requirements too. The family farm was perfect, nestled under the Ruahine Ranges, catching unusually hard frosts for Hawke’s Bay.
If you persevere, the tart, strongflavoured fruit has gourmet possibilities, as my husband discovered when he doctored the Christmas ham with a blackcurrant glaze. These berries make delicious juice. They are a brilliant filling for pies and crumbles, lifting softer flavours such as apples to gourmet status. They can be frozen, jammed or jellied thanks to their naturally-high levels of pectin. The jelly has many uses, including medicinal: a tablespoon with hot water makes a soothing drink for sore throats.
Blackcurrant leaves are very fragrant, and can be infused to make a medicinal tea which is cleansing and diuretic. Add 2tbsp of chopped, young leaves to a cup of boiling water and steep for a few minutes.
Trust me, you will want more blackcurrant bushes. We did, and it didn’t cost us a thing as cuttings practically root on touching the ground.
I’ve discovered you can squeeze the bushes into all sorts of places too. They do quite well in light shade under fruit trees as a hedge, or against a fence or compost heap.
Why you can neglect them & why it pays not to
Our current blackcurrants have been quite unlucky. They get plenty of frost and that’s about it. The plants are hidden in a corner, obscured by a giant heap of sawdust, and we usually forget them entirely until harvest.
Given the neglect, I’m always surprised they fruit at all. But the unsupported plants, although smallish, are still usable. It turns
Green, stinky poo running through the blackcurrant patch was accidentally perfect
out blackcurrants are rather neglecttolerant and you can be lulled into thinking they are fine if left alone.
But if you want them to perform well, blackcurrants will revel in rich, moist conditions, the richer the better. A deep, well-drained soil with good moisture-holding capacity is ideal. They prefer a close-to-neutral ph (6.0 or higher) and won’t do well in acidic conditions.
A heavy mulch is great for conserving water and keeping weeds out from around the base of the stem. Blackcurrant roots are fine and shallow, and extend outwards 20-40cm. They dry out readily and can be easily damaged by digging and planting around the base, another good reason to mulch.
They do best with regular watering until fruit is harvested, especially in light soils. This includes watering into autumn, which is when the plant is preparing itself for next year’s crop.
Ideally, they should be out of strong winds, especially around flowering as it discourages the insects needed for
| pollination.
How to beat the baddies
Gardening textbooks will give you alarming descriptions of everything that attacks blackcurrants. There’s eel worm and currant clearwing moth, the larvae of which burrow into the stems, reducing yield. An undercover, microscopic eriophyid mite can cause big bud disease (enlarged buds which fail to open). It will be obvious if you have it.
Before you get too alarmed, most of these seem to be tolerated in a home garden situation. I know we have currant clearwing because I see the blackened inner stems when we prune. But the bushes look ok and we still get lots of fruit.
Another pest that’s more difficult to beat are the birds. Blackcurrants are best picked fully ripe, as they will not ripen off the bush. You want to leave them on the bush for as long as you dare to allow the sweeter, fuller flavour to develop. This can take up to three weeks after they change colour. Fully ripe blackcurrants are a glossy jet black.
But it’s at this stage that birds will devour them. You’ll need to cover your bushes in netting if you want anything good left to harvest.
There is an alarming list of pests... but most seem to be tolerated in a home garden