Harvest Blackcurrants

Sitting down to strip the fruit from blackcurrant canes.

Note how the fruit grows from the same place (or node) on the cane as the leaves.

A blackcurrant cane. The fresh green stem is this year's growth.

Freeze your blackcurrants on lined trays inside bags before tipping them into a bag for long-term storage. This prevents them from freezing into a large lump of, squashed currants.

2020-07-12T23:00:00+00:00

If you have a blackcurrant bush in your garden, here is an easy approach to combining pruning and harvesting, which will save you energy and time.

When Are My Currants Ripe?
There are few things as delicious as a ripe blackcurrant, fresh from the bush on a warm day. How will you know when your crop is ripe? Well, this will depend to some extent on where you are in the country. The farther north in the UK you are, the later spring and summer arrive and so the later your fruit is likely to ripen. As a child I remember visiting my grandmother on the Isle of Wight and noticing that her daffodils would bloom a good two weeks ahead of ours in Leicestershire. When I moved to Edinburgh, my Scottish daffodils were then two weeks behind my mother’s in the East Midlands and four weeks behind my grandmother’s on the Isle of Wight.

Ripening will also depend upon how much light, warmth and water your bush has received, and this can vary depending on where it is planted in your garden. You can find very different micro-climates within even a small garden; one area might be in the shadow of a north facing wall, while another west-facing spot gets all-day sunshine; a bed at the bottom of a slope may suffer from frost, which tends to ‘roll’ downhill; one at the top of a slope may be more exposed to the wind.

Mine usually need picking in mid-July. Your currants are ripe when they are fat and black and slightly soft when you squeeze them. Taste one and see. If it’s delicious, it’s ripe. Not all the currants will be the same degree of ripeness; a few paler purple ones won’t matter mixed in with the others, in fact they’ll help you get a good set in jam. Wait until almost all the berries are ripe before picking them and just eat the few odd early currants straight from the bush.

Time Taken
This depends on how many bushes you have. One bush can take as little as 20 minutes. The key is to allow yourself lots of time to stop and start as you need. Spread the task out over a couple of hours and enjoy time sitting out in the sunshine.

Energy Needed
You will need sufficient energy (and balance) to manage 5-10 minutes outside, standing over a bush and bending to cut the canes a few inches from the ground. If bending is difficult or makes you dizzy, try using a kneeler.

Equipment
•The blackcurrant bush you planted back in the winter.
•A good pair of secateurs.
•A sharpening stone.
•A disinfectant spray for your secateurs e.g. citrox.
•Somewhere comfortable to sit, where you can spread the canes at your feet.
•A bowl to collect the fruit in.

If you are planning to freeze your crop:
•Baking trays.
•large plastic bags.

Instructions

Getting down on your knees and looking up under the leaves to pick the currants is hard work, particularly if you are stiff and sore or get breathless quickly. Being bent in half upside down is not an advisable position. Instead, I follow my granny’s advice and combine pruning and picking so that you can sit down for most of the job.

1. Get yourself a comfortable outdoor chair or garden swing, a tasty drink within reach and a large bowl.

2. Use a sharp pair of secateurs (sharpening stones can be bought cheaply online and make the job much easier as you need less force. They also do less damage to the stem left behind.

3. Have a bottle of garden disinfectant to hand and use it to clean your blades before moving from one plant to another and again when you have finished. This reduces the chances of you spreading diseases. Think of pruning like human surgery; a surgeon would never operate with dirty tools! Before you disinfect, poke off any mess that accumulates in gaps, which might harbour disease spores. Disinfectant will only clean what it comes in contact with i.e. the surface of any crusted dirt.

4. Take hold of the top of a stem that you can see has fruit on it with your free hand. Note that it will be brown and woody, with the stem turning fresh green near the top with this year's growth. the fruit only grows on last year's woody stems. Leave stems that are all green so they can fruit next year.

5. With your secateur hand, trace the stem down as far as it goes and cut it off either at ground level or, if there is a nice new shoot coming out of it near the base, just above the shoot.

6. Put your stem on the ground near your chair and pick as many stems this way as you are able before getting tired and breathless.

7. Sit down and have a breather. Enjoy your drink and take a minute to appreciate the view. Look at your stems and notice any wildlife. Pale green comb footed spiders and tortrix moth caterpillars are quite common.

8. Use your fingers to gently rake the currants off their stems into the bowl without squishing them.

9. If you are up to it, repeat until you have a pile of fruitless stems, a bowl of currants and no fruit on the bushes.

10. Have a break.

Freeze your currants as soon as possible so you don’t find yourself halfway through a recipe with no energy to complete it. Freezing quickly after picking preserves the nutrients.

11. Shake them onto baking trays that will fit in your freezer, lined with paper, so the currants don’t stick. Leave the trays on the ground near your feet while you have another break (your presence will stop the birds from pinching them). With only a single layer of berries, any little spiders etc will crawl away to find better hiding places.

13. Pick out any bits of leaf, caterpillars or stems.

14. Slide the tray into a large plastic bag and put it into the freezer.

Once frozen you can slide the tray out of the bag, leaving you with individual frozen currants. You can them scoop out what you need when you need it. This method prevents the currants from being crushed under their own weight and freezing together in clumps.

Finishing the Pruning
Your bushes will now be much more open, so the remaining stems have light and air to grow in for the rest of the summer, making them stronger. You can come back to them with your secateurs to remove any diseased stems or old stumpy bits. If you have lots of new stems growing close together, remove some to give the others space but don’t remove more than one third of the stems in one year or the bush will struggle to recover.

What to Do With the Old Stems
If you have a compost heap, strip off the leaves and mix them in.

The stems will compost but take much longer so are best put in your garden waste bin, to be composted at a much higher temperature in an industrial facility.

If you have a shredder, you can shred them and then add them to your compost heap. This is something that is fun but requires a bit of energy to set up the machine and stand feeding in the stems, so you may need help or to delegate!

Recipes for Blackcurrants
Defrost your currants and eat them fresh:

In a fruit salad
Fresh with yoghurt
Sprinkled into a mixed green salad

Some quick and simple ideas:
Blackcurrant cordial
Summer pudding
Blackcurrant jam
Blackcurrant vinegar
Blackcurrant gin / vodka

Categories: medium energy30-45 minssummer

Tags: blackcurrantsfruitfood growing

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Harvest Blackcurrants