Plump fruit are like jewels

It’s not only vegetables that provide riches to my table, as the soft fruits are now ripening in abundance. Gooseberries are full and plump and redcurrants glisten like rubies on their laden branches. These are slow fruits to pick as each has to be harvested in back-aching tradition. Blackcurrants, however, can be cut off at the whole branch and then harvested in comfort on the bench. That’s because it produces next year’s fruit on new wood, but redcurrants and gooseberries produce on old wood. Why can’t they all do the same?