For blackcurrant liqueur, see Crème de cassis. Grossulariaceae grown for its edible berries. It is winter hardy, but cold weather at flowering time during the spring may black currants near me the size of the crop.
Bunches of small, glossy black fruit develop along the stems in the summer and can be harvested by hand or by machine. The raw fruit is particularly rich in vitamin C and polyphenols. Blackcurrants can be eaten raw but are usually cooked in sweet or savoury dishes. Ribes nigrum is a medium-sized shrub, growing to 1.
All parts of the plant are strongly aromatic. Each flower has a hairy calyx with yellow glands, the five lobes of which are longer than the inconspicuous petals. There are five stamens surrounding the stigma and style and two fused carpels. An established bush can produce about 4. Polyphenol phytochemicals present in the fruit, seeds and leaves, are being investigated for their potential biological activities. The blackcurrant is native to northern Europe and Asia. Cultivation in Europe is thought to have started around the last decades of the 17th century.
Blackcurrants can grow well on sandy or heavy loams, or forest soils, as long as their nutrient requirements are met. They prefer damp, fertile but not waterlogged ground and are intolerant of drought. Two-year-old bushes are usually planted but strong one-year-old stock can also be used. Planting certified stock avoids the risk of introducing viruses. On a garden scale the plants can be set at intervals of 1. An annual spring mulch of well rotted manure is ideal and poultry manure can also be used but needs prior composting with straw or other waste vegetable material. Spent mushroom compost can be used but care should be taken as it often contains lime and blackcurrants prefer slightly acidic soils.
Weed growth can be suppressed with an organic mulch such as sawdust, bark, mushroom compost or straw, heavy plastic topped with an organic mulch cover or landscape fabric. Blackcurrant fruit is borne primarily on one-year-old shoots. Newly planted bushes should be pruned severely, cutting all shoots back to two buds above ground level. This gives the plant a chance to get properly established before needing to put its energy into producing fruit. The general rule when pruning is to remove all weak shoots and those growing out sideways which may get weighed down when fruiting. On a garden scale, the berries should be picked when dry and ripe. Commercially, most harvesting is done mechanically by straddle harvesters.
These move continually down the rows, straddling a row of bushes, shaking the branches and stripping off the fruit. Ribes plants are susceptible to several diseases and a number of insect pests. However, new varieties have been or are being developed to overcome some of these problems. It causes a decline in yield and is quite widespread in Europe but is rarely encountered on other continents. One host is plants in the genus Ribes. American gooseberry mildew and powdery mildew can infect the leaves and shoot tips, and botrytis may cause the fruit to rot in a wet season. The blackcurrant leaf midge can cause browning, crimping and distortion of leaves at the tips of shoots but it is seldom a serious problem.
In a serious attack, the bush can be denuded of leaves. Green currant is a variant of blackcurrant cultivated in Finland. Its berries lack a dark color and an almost completely the strong aroma typical of blackcurrant. There are many cultivars of blackcurrant. Baldwin’ was the mainstay of the industry for many years but it has now largely been superseded by more productive and disease-resistant varieties. In Britain the Scottish Crop Research Institute was tasked with developing new varieties suitable for growing in the north of the country.
They produced new cultivars that had greater cold tolerance, especially in the spring, ripened earlier and more evenly and had greater fungal disease resistance. In North America, there is a need for this fruit to have resistance to white pine blister rust. New cultivars such as ‘Crusader’, ‘Coronet’ and ‘Consort’ have been developed there by crossing R. However the quality and yield of these varieties are poor as compared to non-resistant strains and only Consort is reliably self-fertile.
Percentages are roughly approximated using US recommendations for adults. Blackcurrant seed oil is rich in vitamin E and unsaturated fatty acids, including alpha-linolenic acid and gamma-linolenic acid. Decoction of the leaves, bark or roots was used as a traditional remedy. During World War II, most fruits rich in vitamin C, such as oranges, became difficult to obtain in the United Kingdom.