Blackcurrant, small but bountiful

Black berries ripen through midsummer and late summer after a flowering in mid-spring: tangy eaten raw, but excellent cooked into pies, crumbles, jams and clafoutis. Blackcurrant (Ribes nigrum) is valued above all for its high vitamin C content, and it needs full sun to fruit well — give it that and the crop is generous.

Blackcurrant at a glance

Name	Ribes nigrum
Family	Grossulariaceae
Type	fruit shrub
Height	40 to 50 inches (100 to 120 cm)
Exposure	full sun
Soil	ordinary
Foliage	deciduous
Flowering	mid-spring
Harvest	midsummer to late summer

Planting, pruning, and caring for blackcurrant, here is how you can boost the harvest.

• Read also: Blackcurrant health benefits

Planting blackcurrant

The planting phase of blackcurrant is an important part of the life cycle of your fruit bush because it determines future growth and harvest for the fruits.

If it was purchased with roots bared, you must plant it in fall and try to mingle different varieties to maximize fertilization.

Blackcurrant purchased in pots may also be planted in spring, taking special care to regularly water it at the beginning.

• Blackcurrant needs sun to produce its fruits
• Adding fertilizer during planting raises productivity and blackcurrant harvest.
• Refer to our guidelines for planting.

Pruning and caring for blackcurrant

At the end of the winter, cut back old blackcurrant branches to about one-third and free some space in the center to create a bowl-like shape.

Finally, remove dead and fragile branches.

In spring, add fruit tree fertilizer to enhance fruit-bearing and blackcurrant harvest.

In summer, during heat waves or prolonged dry spells, water at the base without wetting the leaves.

Discover a video showing how to correctly prune blackcurrant

• Blackcurrant fruits best on one-year-old wood, so take the darkest, oldest stems right down to the base rather than just shortening them.
• Mulch shallow-rooted shrubs such as blueberries, azaleas or hydrangeas with a 5-8 cm layer of bark chips or straw, which slows soil evaporation and reduces how often you must water in summer.
• Swollen, rounded buds that fail to open point to blackcurrant gall mite; cut out and bin the affected shoots, as the mite carries reversion virus.

Among the best blackcurrant varieties

In France, only two blackcurrant varieties are grown. These are ‘Black Down’ (very productive) and ‘Noir de Bourgogne’ (Burgundy Black, one of the sweetest).

If you wish to experiment and enjoy more diversity, you may also opt for:

• ‘Royal de Naples’ – richly perfumed variety
• ‘Black Edward’ – very productive
• ‘Boskoop Giant’ – slightly tangy taste

• ‘Noir de Bourgogne’ is the variety behind traditional creme de cassis, chosen for its aroma rather than for heavy yields.
• ‘Ben Lomond’ flowers late, which helps the blossom escape frost in cold gardens where early bloomers lose their crop.
• Where blackcurrant gall mite, the cause of big bud, is common, choose a resistant variety such as ‘Ben Hope’.

Which blackcurrant variety to choose

Two varieties dominate commercial growing in France, while a handful of others are worth planting for aroma or for a tangier fruit. Mixing several also helps pollination.

Planting more than one variety side by side is the simplest way to improve fertilisation and so the crop.

Learn more about blackcurrant

Be it during the mid-spring flowering season or during the summer fruit-bearing, blackcurrant bushes are appealing to the eye and are fine both planted as stand-alones and as a hedge.

This fruit shrub produces beautiful black berries that sweet-toothed persons like to savor in pies, crumbles, jams and clafoutis.

With a high Vitamin C content, blackcurrant is a must-have in the fruit shrub category.

Blackcurrant is most delicious by far once it is cooked, since it is often very tangy when eaten raw.

As an interesting side note, did you know that its buds produce an oil that is used to make perfume?

• Read also: Blackcurrant therapeutic properties

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