The short and sweet blackcurrant season
The intense flavour and stunning colour of blackcurrants are one of the early summer joys from the allotments. I use the fruit in ice cream, jam and crumbles but best of all, homemade blackcurrant cordial beats anything you can buy.
It’s not a decorative bush but that doesn’t matter on the allotment where appearance shouldn’t be a top priority. Blackbirds love them and I always net the bushes carefully. They are welcome to finish off any remaining berries when I take off the net.
Harvesting blackcurrants can be awkward. If hunkering down under the bush gets a bit too uncomfortable, it is perfectly in order to cut out several older branches right at the bottom and pick their berries while relaxing on a chair. Blackcurrant bushes are not very long-lived as they are susceptible to viruses. It’s better by far to work on a plan of continuous replacement than wait until the bush loses vigour. New bushes can easily be propagated from cuttings taken from the branches cut off for picking. Stems pushed in the ground root very quickly. On my plot just now, I’m picking fruit from bushes propagated from cuttings from the Isle of Ulva and from a derelict ruin in Sutherland. The time to buy new bushes is in the autumn when nurseries will be selling bare-rooted plants.
Many of the bushes on sale today have been bred in Scotland at the James Hutton Institute. When the breeding programme began in the 1950s they focused on late-flowering, frost-tolerant plants to suit the weather at that time. The varieties are called after Scottish mountains. Ben Lomond was released in 1972 and since then further varieties were released for commercial cultivation. Ben Hope is the most popular cultivar for gardeners in the UK just now.
Recent wet and warm winters followed by dry summers tie in with predictions of climate change. Today’s challenge is to breed blackcurrant bushes that will cope with these new conditions.
It’s not only fruit which will be affected by changing climate. Some of our allotment produce needs some cold winter weather. Garlic is planted at the end of the year and relies on cold weather to split into cloves as it grows. Clods of earth break down after being frozen making a soft surface for next year’s planting and cold weather kills off some of summer’s insect pests. Tradition says that sprouts and parsnips are tastier after frost. ■