IF YOU think your garden or gardening skills aren鈥檛 up to growing fruit, think again. Blackcurrant bushes are very easy to care for and they take up little space 鈥� perhaps a couple of square metres each.
I do little to my own plant, apart from throwing some garden netting over it every summer for a month or so to stop the birds from stealing the crop. I hold the netting away from the fruits with a ramshackle structure of bamboo canes, which can be taken down once the berries are picked.
Advertisement
Blackcurrants鈥� weakness, though, is a potential vulnerability to climate change. If the winter isn鈥檛 sufficiently cold for long enough, this interferes with flowering and leads to a smaller crop. 鈥淚f they haven鈥檛 received enough chill, they still think they鈥檙e in winter,鈥� says Hamlyn Jones at the University of Dundee, UK.
Although the average temperature in the UK has risen by only about 1掳C since the 1960s, winters have warmed more than summers. Plus, a small increase in average temperature tends to give a disproportionately large fall in the number of hours spent below 7掳C, a common measure of how much winter chilling a fruit crop has had.
Fortunately, some varieties can get by with less winter chilling than others. This year, commercial growers have seen the first harvest from a new variety called Ben Lawers, which has been bred to cope with warmer winters. You can see the 鈥渃hilling hour鈥� requirements for for example, and it also lets you look up how many chilling hours different regions in the UK experienced last year.
A variety called Ben Hope that is popular with home growers is also tolerant of warmer winters and is ideal for gardens in the south of the UK. But those in cooler regions might be better off with a variety like Ben Lomond, which needs more chilling hours but flowers later in the year and so is less likely to suffer if there are late frosts.
Late autumn and winter is the ideal time to plant a blackcurrant bush, in the dormant season 鈥� just avoid doing so if the soil is frozen or very wet. Once in the ground, brutally lop off all the stems down to a few centimetres. In 18 months, the summer after next, you will have your first harvest.
Blackcurrants aren鈥檛 usually sweet enough to eat straight from the bush, but you can boil them up with sugar to make a delicious coulis for ice cream or Greek yoghurt. If I have a good crop, I also by straining out the skins and pips, putting it in a tub in the freezer and mixing up the slush three or four times to stop large ice crystals from forming 鈥� no ice-cream maker needed.
What you need
A blackcurrant bush
Garden netting to keep the birds away
A few bamboo canes
Science of gardening appears every four weeks
Next week
Citizen science
听
These articles are posted each week at
