CURRANTS SEASON BY SEASON

Versatile for the kitchen, easy to grow and unfussy where they sit, currants are an attractive soft fruit option, says David Patch

-  David Patch

This month we are going to look at currants, a staple of any soft fruit garden. Easy to grow, heavy to crop and tolerant of a wide range of soils and situations, they are some of the easiest fruit for the beginner to try their hand at. The fruit is also hard to find in the shops as it has a short shelf life but it can be used in myriad ways, from fresh to processed into syrups, jellies, cordials and compotes.

First, we need to do a little botanical housekeeping. All colours of currant are members of the genus Ribes, a large group of more than 200 different species, including gooseberries as well as the spring flowering ornamental shrubs such as ‘Pulborough Scarlet’ and ‘Edward VII’, which are bombproof mainstays of any classic shrub border. It’s essential to know that blackcurrants are a distinct species (Ribes nigrum) from red and whitecurrants (Ribes rubrum), and as such have slightly different growing patterns and needs. Don’t worry, they aren’t fussy and will happily grow side by side in the fruit garden – the main difference is pruning, which we’ll cover later.

Black, red and whitecurrants are all technically berries – defined as a fleshy fruit without a stone produced from a single flower. Why we call them ‘currants’ is a bit unclear, but the word may come from the French word for blackcurrant, ‘cassis’. However, under this definition, strawberries and blackberries aren’t botanically berries at all – they are actually classed as ‘aggregate fruit’. So in some sort of botanist’s April Fool, blackcurrants are really black berries, and blackberries aren’t!

SPRING