Instructions
1  Buy your bare root plant between November and March.  Keep its roots moist, cool and frost-free until you can plant it.  Don’t keep it wrapped in plastic, which may encourage funghi.  Stand the plant in a bucket, with a little water in the bottom, or fill the bucket with damp compost.  Place it somewhere sheltered outside or in a cool shed.  

2  Choose your planting site and make sure it is free of weeds before you buy your plant, so you’re ready to go when it arrives.  Be particularly careful to clear those perennial weeds with thick roots as they will come back year after year, competing for water, nutrients and light.  Because their roots will grow through your blackcurrant’s roots, they will be very difficult to get rid of later.

3  Dig a hole deep enough to plant your blackcurrant with the soil level at least 6cm above the junction of the root and stem.  This will encourage it to send out more shoots, creating a bushier plant and more fruit.  If you look at the stem there will be little marks all along it, which are where it will produce buds and then shoots in the spring.  The hole should be wide enough to let you spread the roots out in the bottom, with a good 3cm spare all around.  This means the new roots will encounter nice soft soil to grow out into, instead of a hard, compacted edge, which encourages them to bend and just grow round and round in the hole.

4  Mix your manure/compost with the soil you have dug out to improve the soil's structure and nutrients.  See above re. why this is important.

5  Place the plant in the hole and spread the roots out.  Check it is deep enough.

6  Backfill the hole carefully with the soil/manure mix, so that the plant is sitting upright.

7  Firm the soil around the plant.

8  Mulch the soil around the plant (cover it with a good couple of inches of manure/compost).  This will gradually be dragged down into the soil by worms, adding nutrients to the soil and improving its structure.  A mulch also helps to suppress weeds and reduces evaporation from the soil in the summer, giving you much less weeding and watering to do.

9   Leave it alone to settle in.  The rain will water it.  There's no need for stakes or supports.

Click here for more details on planting bare root fruit

Managing Pests

Aphids

Aphids love the soft new growth on many plants, so look out for the tell-tale signs of shiny, sticky leaves in the spring.  The aphids cluster on the underside of each leaf, where you can't see them.   They suck the sweet. sticky sap, leaving a nasty mess and distorting the growing leaves.  Their soft mouth arts can't pierce older leaves.

•  Avoid using chemical fertilisers which encourage the quick, sappy leaf growth that they love.

•  Grow lots of plants like fennel or dill with flat, umbrella-like flowers, which encourage the type of insects that eat aphids.  Click here for advice on planting to encourage predators.

•  Hang fat balls and peanut feeders near your bushes to encourage blue tits, which eat aphids.

•  You can dislodge aphids with a jet of water from a hose, or rub them off with your fingers.  

•  Once you have lots of leafy growth, pinching off the growing shoot at the top of each cane removes the soft growth they are looking for.  

Birds

You don't want to lose your lovely crop to birds, who also love berries,

•  Once your fruit starts to ripen, cover it with netting, but make sure the birds can't get underneath or tangled in it.

•  Tie a series of old CDs along a length of string and hang it across your fruit patch.  the CDs flash in the sun and birds are spooked by this.

Look out for my post on easy pruning and cropping of blackcurrants later in the year.