Grow soft fruitBlackcurrants

Blackcurrants are highly productive - expect 5kg of berries per plant

Almost all the UK’s crop of 13 billion blackcurrants ends up as Ribena, but home-grown ones are great for pies and jam, or fruit coulis. 

After a year or two, blackcurrants are highly productive and should produce around 5kg of berries per plant.

Best varieties 

• Early: ‘Ben Connan’
• Midseason: ‘Ben Hope’
• Late: compact ‘Ben Sarek’ or ‘Ben Tirran’

Getting started

Buy two-year-old plants, which have at least two stems of pencil thickness.

Position in a sunny, sheltered spot. The plants are tough, but the flowers may be damaged by a cold spring.

Plant 2.5cm deeper than its original planting depth to encourage new shoots from the base. Cut back existing shoots to one bud. Allow each plant 1.5sq m (1.2sq m for ‘Ben Sarek’).

Care

Blackcurrants like a sunny, sheltered spot

Feed in spring with a balanced fertiliser such as growmore applied at 100g per sq m, then mulch the surface with bulky organic material. Water in dry spells, especially when the fruit starts to swell.

Prune in winter a year or two after planting, once the plant has seven or eight good branches. Remove a third of the branches, starting with the oldest (darkest), cutting them down to ground level or to a strong new side branch to encourage new shoots.

Renovating

Restore old bushes by cutting up to half the branches down to the ground. Aim to leave six to eight well-spaced, upright branches.

New shoots should appear the next year, when you can remove half the remaining old branches; cut down the rest the next year. If the bush doesn’t produce strong new shoots, or fails to fruit well in two years, it may have blackcurrant reversion virus so buy new plants.

Replace old plants to maximise your crop. New varieties tend to be more compact, and produce bigger berries.