By Steven Biggs
A Neglected Currant Bush
Red currants are easy to grow, making them well suited to home gardens.
A lonely red currant bush under the apple tree next door showed me currants are a perfect fruit for home gardens.
That forlorn currant bush had been untended for years, growing in shade and heavy clay soil.
It had a lot going against it. Yet it reliably grew currants every year…and when they went unpicked, I reached through the fence to harvest them.
Why Grow Currants?
Currants are a great fit for home gardens for a few reasons:
They are easy to grow
They tolerate the less-than-perfect conditions of a home garden
They produce fruit even when neglected
They are versatile in the kitchen (syrups, jellies, cordials, compotes)
The fruit is rarely sold at stores (and expensive if you find it)
Despite all of these reasons to grow currants, they are less common here in North America than in Europe, where they are a garden staple. Keep reading to find out how to grow this versatile fruit in a garden, edible landscape, or food forest.
Currant Fruit
Black currants, red currants, and clove currants are all different species. There are some differences in pruning, but they’re all simple to grow and can be planted together.
Black currants have an intense flavour…people usually love them or hate them!
Black currant fruit can get up to 1 cm across. They have an intense flavour that I’ve heard variously described as piney, resinous, musky—and scrumptious. With black currants, it’s usually a love or hate relationship, there’s no in between.
Red currant fruit (and I’m lumping in pink and white currants here) tend to be a bit smaller than black currants, with fruit that get up to about 0.5 cm across.
Clove currants taste like a mild black currant. These are also known as buffalo or golden currant, and are often grown as an ornamental plant. (Also known as Missouri currant.)
How to Use Currants
They are similar in size and shape to blueberries. But while blueberries are often eaten fresh, currants are often made into jelly and juice because of the seeds and tartness.
The seeds are edible (I know a gardener who make black currant oil from the seeds). But the seeds are also the right size to get stuck in teeth and partial plates.
(One year I made a mixed fruit jam with currants, raspberries, and blueberries. After I gave my Uncle Bill a jar he teased me about my partial-plate-buster jam. These days I strain out the seeds when using them in jams.
Covering more than 20 fruits, the focus is easy-to-grow fruit suited to northern gardens. Fruits include cherry-family crops, currants, cane fruit such as raspberry and blackberry, elderberry, serviceberry and saskatoon, haskap, plum family, medlar, melon, husk cherries...and more! Find out more here..
Forget Store-Bought Pectin
Currants contain lots of pectin. Use them as a source of pectin when making jams and jellies from fruits that contain less pectin. My favourite combo is a raspberry-red-currant jam.
How Currants Grow
Red currant bushes in flower
Currants are multi-stemmed shrubs that can grow 1 - 2 metres high and wide, depending on the type and variety.
Red and black currants have clusters of green, frilly flowers. Clove currants have fragrant yellow flowers. The clusters turn into “strigs,” which are thin stems that carry a chain of fruit.
Red currants make flowers on “spurs” on older branches; while black currants make flowers on young wood.
Self-Fruitful
The flowers are “self-fruitful,” which means that you don’t need more than one variety for pollination and fruit production. Some sources recommend having two black currant varieties for better pollination, but if space is an issue, don’t sweat it: I’ve had gardens with a single black currant that performed well.
Immature currants look like little green peas. They can be beautiful as they ripen. Especially the red currants, which have long strigs laden with over a dozen fruit. They look like colourful jewellery on the bushes.
If you can’t tell apart your black and red currant plants, pick a leaf and crush it. You will have no doubt which plant is your black currant because of the distinctive smell of black currant leaves.
Currants in Garden Design
Currants are a great fit for a home gardens because you can weave them into your landscape.
Clove currant flowers
In designing edible home landscapes, many gardeners have trouble coming up with ideas for the shady north side of a building. Look no further. Currants are your answer.
Here are ideas:
Because they are well-behaved shrubs that don’t grow too tall or spread excessively, they are well suited to planting as a hedge around a vegetable garden
Red currants have branches that live for a number of years, making them a candidate for espalier
A well-behaved currant bush can be nestled right into an existing flower bed
Plant amongst taller trees, adding another layer of fruit-bearing plants to your garden
How to Plant Currants
The best time to plant or transplant currants is in the fall. That’s because they leaf out very early in the spring. If planting in spring, the earlier the better. Like any shrub, if you move it while dormant there is less stress to the plant.
Container-grown currant plants can be planted throughout the summer, but spring and fall are the best times.
Here are spacing guidelines:
In a row or hedge, aim for a spacing between plants of 0.5 – 1.5 metres, with rows 2 – 2.5 metres apart
For individual plants, plan for a clear area of up to 1.5 metres around the plant
Where to Grow Currants
Currants do great in climates where summers are moist and not too hot. Plant-hardiness zones are never an exact science, and hardiness varies with variety and site. But in general, currants are hardy in USDA zones 3-7.
Plant currants amongst taller trees, adding another layer of fruit-bearing plants to your garden
Gardeners in warmer zones can sometimes extend the range by growing in shadier areas where there is less heat stress.
In cold, borderline zones, a north-facing slope slows down growth in spring, making it less likely flowers will be hit by a late cold snaps. Mulching also keeps soil cooler and delays spring growth.
Soil for Currants
Currants tolerate a wide range of soils. Whatever the soil, amend with lots of organic matter to improve drainage, aeration, and moisture retention. This is important because currants have shallow roots.
Ideal: a moist clay soil with lots organic matter
The least ideal: a dry sandy soil
Pruning Currants
With regular pruning it’s possible to coax more fruit from a currant bush. However, as I explained earlier, in a laid-back gardener’s garden, they still fruit respectably well.
Here’s the key thing to know when pruning: Black currants grow differently from red currants (and white and pink). That means that you prune your black currants differently than red, white, and pink ones.
Red Currant Pruning (pink, white)
Red currant bushes have branches that produce fruit for a number of years, so you create a more permanent framework
Red Currants produce most heavily on three- and four-year-old branches
Aim for four to six stems each of one-, two-, and three-year-old wood
Gradually trim out stems after 4 years (unless you’re doing espalier…in which case you might keep them longer)
A healthy shrub sends up a number of new branches each year; prune out all but the best half dozen or so
*Note: If you read European texts, they often talk about red currants grown on “legs,” which means that there is a single stem coming out of the ground, and all the branches start to come out of that single stem a few inches above the ground level. It looks as if the plant is on a little leg. (I have never seen red currants growing on legs in garden centres here in Ontario, so if you have read about “legs” but can’t find bushes grown in this way, don’t sweat it.) The advantage, if you choose to propagate your own red currants on legs, is that the fruit branches are higher off the ground, and your fruit is less likely to get muddy. Black currants are not suited to legs because, as you’ll read below, their manner of growth is different.
Black Currant Pruning
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Black currant shrubs fruit most heavily on one-year-old wood, meaning that instead of creating a permanent framework as you do with red currants, you want lots of new growth. Prune to fully renew the bush over three years
Remove about a third of the bush each year
Remove any branches older than 3 years
Keep strong one-year-old shoots, and two- and three-year shoots with lots of one-year-old branches coming off of them
Keep 10-12 shoots per mature bush—aim for half of them being one year old
Plant new black currant bushes slightly deeper than they were planted before, to encourage more branches from below ground level
*Note: you might see the term “stooled” bush used to describe the best way to grow a black currant. This means that there are many stems coming from ground level, as opposed to a leg.
Many growers prune currants in late winter, while dormant. However, my preference is to prune soon after harvest. It’s when I have the time to do it.
Other Currant Bush Care
Mulch the soil below currant bushes with a couple of inches of straw, wood chips, composted leaves, or grass clippings. This does three things:
It keeps the soil moist
It helps to prevent fruit on lower branches from getting muddy
It prevents the growth of weeds
FAQ Growing Currants
What about white pine blister rust?
Currants are an “alternate host” for the disease white pine blister rust. Alternate host means that the disease requires more than one type of plant to complete its life cycle.
In the case of white pine blister rust, white pine trees, an important commercial species—can be killed by the disease. Currants infected with the disease may drop some leaves, but it doesn’t have a big impact on currant yield.
But the currants permit the disease to complete its life cycle—it can’t move from pine to pine.
Some things to consider when thinking about currants and white pine blister rust:
Are there white pines growing nearby? If you’re concerned about the disease, don’t plant currants within 300 m (1,000' feet) of white pines.
Are there wild currants and gooseberries in the area? (Wild currants and gooseberries are widespread, and are also alternate hosts for the disease.)
There are disease-resistant varieties of black currant (e.g. Titania, Consort)
Black currants are more susceptible to the disease than red and white currants.
Is it legal to grow currants?
Federal legislation in the USA made it illegal to grow currants until 1966. When the federal rules changed, many states continued to ban growing currants.
It is now legal to grow currants in many American states—but check to make sure that they’re permitted in your state. It’s not legal to grow currants in all states.
It is legal to grow currants in Canada.
What can I do about birds eating my currants?
Some people net bushes, though I find it’s too much work. If the birds are taking more than their fair share, pick before they’re perfectly ripe. They’re still perfectly good for your cordial, jellies, and sauces.
Where can I buy a currant bush?
Check out our list of nurseries that sell fruit trees and bushes.
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