Collecting Currants

Day 275: With COVID numbers remaining high and the stupidity rate climbing, I am finding it increasingly difficult to urge myself out on walks. I have had three near-misses while less than half a mile from home, two when a driver passing another car came across the fog line on the opposite side of the road where I was walking, facing traffic. The number of vehicles heading toward the Park would appear to be at or above the last several years' "increased visitation" rate, and while I don't want to die of COVID or a coronary, neither do I want to be taken out by an impatient driver. Consequently, I am also having a hard time finding material my readers will find interesting, so today's offering is currant news. With an A.

They're nearly done now, my two small bushes, but they have given me roughly a cup of delicious Red Lake currants. The stems which bore fruit have been marked with flagging tape so that I know to prune them out. Red currants bear best on second-year wood. Third-year wood will produce fewer berries. On the other hand, gooseberries can be asked to produce for three years on any given stem before it needs to be taken out of service, and boy, do I have gooseberries coming on! I've already picked close to a cupful, and that was just for starters. The two fruits (currants and goozleberries) are being stored temporarily in my freezer until I have gleaned the full crop. From there, it's into the jam pot for a small, but utterly delicious specialty batch.

Jamming these two fruits is a bit of a bother, but gooseberry/currant fans will tell you it's worth it. Currants alone are best turned into jelly, straining the cooked fruit through muslin to remove the dried flower ends and stems. Gooseberries will require being "topped and tailed," as the saying goes, i.e., both the stem end and the blossom end will need to be cut off with a sharp knife. Fortunately, this tart fruit doesn't ripen all at once. Topping and tailing seems much less of a chore when done a cup at a time. Berries can be frozen without adding sugar or liquid to hold until you're ready to make jam. I'm looking forward to having a couple of half-pints, but don't expect me to share!

Berry Bonanza

Day 262: Originally when I removed the sod from 25 sq. ft. of yard, sunk three big flowerpots in the soil up to their waists and fenced the area off to keep it safe from browsing deer and elk, I dubbed it the "Blueberry Pen" for the three bushes planted in its confines. One thing led to another, as things are wont to do; a pot for tomatoes was included, an extension was added and the fence restrung to accommodate an old, unhappy gooseberry (also in a large pot), and then in a major makeover, my botany partner spent an entire day busting sod while I hauled it away, enlarging the Pen to roughly 400 sq. ft. The new space was destined to hold Red Lake currants, additional gooseberry plants (I love gooseberry jam), a few special-case raspberries (separate from the main Heritage everbearing raspberry cage), a mulberry bush ("here we go 'round...") and yes, a pair of tomatoes, cherry and beefsteak. The entrance to the Berry Pen (renamed) has been defined by an arched trellis now bearing two vigorous hardy kiwi vines, and a potato start is bedded under straw in an open spot, its leaves reaching for the sunlight as it develops more tubers. It's a lot of garden in a small space, a little prickly to walk through for anyone not understanding that gooseberries bite back; an intense garden, now intensely focused on filling my freezer with my favourite fruits. The gooseberries are just starting to blush, the currants are reddening, and the blueberries are nearly as thick as leaves on the stems of their bushes, a veritable bonanza of berries waiting to be jammed and muffinized.

Currant Potential

Day 224: My red currants are putting on their first crop of fruit this year, and although I probably won't have enough for even a small batch of jam, I should have enough to combine as a tangy addition with another type of fruit for the base (raspberries, maybe?). The variety is Red Lake, and I have reason to believe that my stock was cultivated in California because they brought with them a notorious pest of California vineyards, Blue-Green Sharpshooters. So much for interstate quarantine of plants! In any event, I am winning the Sharpshooter War by diligent application of a pesticide. It was not my first choice of defense, but I soon discovered that for soapy water to be effective, I'd have to sit in the garden to apply it every half hour, and even then, it would just relocate the Sharpshooters to other plants. So, that said, I broke out some heavier artillery and set to work eliminating Sharpshooters from my garden. Now a note on currant cultivation: most cultivated currants fruit on second-year canes. As you can see behind the fruits in this picture, the second-year cane develops a woody bark, making it fairly easy to identify when it comes time to prune them out. Although the older canes may still bear fruit for a couple of years, amounts will be reduced. At most, canes should be kept no more than three years, one as a non-fruiting stem and two to bear. Then they should be cut out to establish a rotation between new canes and old in which both bearing canes and non-bearing canes exist side-by-side. I'll be marking mine with different colours of flagging tape so I can easily tell which is which.