It’s time to harvest the Blackcurrants. They’re so ripe I can actually smell them as I walk past the bush. I only have one Blackcurrant bush but it’s always dripping in berries so I always have more than enough.
I usually use the Sarah Raven method for harvesting Blackcurrants by cutting whole branches out with berries on them and picking them at my leisure. This solves two problems in one by pruning the old wood out and making it easier to pick the berries.
I didn’t prune all of the fruiting branches out because that would make the bush too small. I only pruned about a third of them out and next year I will prune the rest. Those branches will still fruit but just a little further up on the new wood.
I’ve made a few things in the past with my Blackcurrants:
This time I made Blackcurrant Cake from a recipe I found online. It was lovely, however next time I would put more sugar in as the Blackcurrants were still just a tad sharp.
Have fun with your Blackcurrants, if you have any, if you don’t then get some for next year :)
Everything (well almost, everything) is green in my garden at the moment. At this time of year all of the fruit is unripe and most of the things that are ready for harvest are either green (Lettuce, Spinach, Kale etc) or the colour is under the ground (Carrots, Radish etc). With the exception of my Lollo Rosso Lettuce and my amazing display of Chive flowers virtually everything else is green. My Strawberries, as you can see above, are still green.
My Blackcurrants are plentiful, but you guessed it, still green.
My Peaches are fluffy and cute but very much still green.
But, my Redcurrants, well, they are mostly green but today I noticed that one of them has a tiny patch of pink on it. Yey! Bring on the summer – full of ripe, fragrant fruit and a garden full of colour.
I realise it’s only March (well, April nearly) but my Blackcurrant bushes and Red and White currant bushes are flowering – big time! The flowers are so teeny-tiny that I only noticed them this evening when I was making my 6pm sweep of the garden.
The Blackcurrant flowers (top) are all hairy and cute, packed tightly inside every leaf nook. Whereas the White currants (above) are yellow and dangling down, ready to form the drooping sprigs that will be picked wholesale come summer.
This is so exciting! It means that there ‘will’ be fruit. Oh I am glad.
