Ruud Kleinpaste: Pruning back the berries

Blackcurrants pruning 

Oh… good old Ribes nigrum! It’s one of our favourite fruits – Juuls makes pretty mean jam out of those dark berries. You can eat them raw off the plant, but honestly… jam is the way to go as far as I’m concerned. 

They hail from the temperate areas of Central and Northern Europe and Asia – yep, they can deal with frosts. 

Blackcurrants are usually grown as multi-stemmed plants, with an open structure of 6–10 upright stems growing from the base.  

Established bushes (aged four years or older) are best pruned every winter to keep them fruiting strongly. This is a simple process – cut out up to a third of the oldest stems down at the base, create some space in the middle. The younger stems will then rise up to produce fruit for the next few years.  

Red Currants pruning is slightly different from Blackcurrants. 

From late winter to early spring – prune all forms of red and white currants annually while the plants are still dormant, before any signs of growth appear. 

Red and white currants will fruit at the base of shoots, these are known as 'laterals', that grow out from the main branches, especially the younger branches!  

Young = new, narrower and lighter-coloured stems; old = thicker and darker stems 

Prune in winter to leave between eight and ten healthy, strong main branches each year. On one-year-old bushes, prune back new shoots by half. Leave the branch with an outward-facing bud at the top. 

Some folk grow them as “cordons”: a bit like climbers, up a wire structure in the form of one or two main branches. The side-shoots that come off those main stems will carry the red currents. 

In mid-summer – prune cordons and fans to restrict growth and maintain their shape. 

 

Gooseberries pruning  

Just as a warning: they are prickly rascals – wear good gloves! 

First of all: get rid of dead branches – cut them off as low as you can. 

Cut out the really old branches (especially more than 5 years old) and open the inside up a bit (not too much, mind you). But if you haven’t pruned your gooseberries for a long time, they may need a bit more surgery to open that bush up again. 

Old branches are thick and dark in colour. 

Taking these old sturdy, dark branches out makes the plant grow new juvenile growth that will do the job for the next few years. 

The idea is to replace the older stuff with newer (much more productive) growth. 

The younger branches (lighter in colour and thinner) can be cut back a bit (from the top) to get the plant to set up new spurs, which will produce new fruit. 

The whole idea is to create a nice series of fruiting areas in the inside of the plant; not too high but certainly accessible when you want to harvest the berries. 

Late winter is a good time to fertilise the berries with some general fertiliser, followed by a hand-full of Sulphate of Potash to remind the plants that it’s time to think of flowers and setting fruit! 

 

My good mate Mike (Scottish, a builder and handy guy to have as a friend) hadn’t done any of his pruning for quite a few years and asked me to help him out restoring the Blackcurrants and Gooseberries. 

He had made a pretty “cage” in his garden to stop the birds vandalizing the berries, and it took us about two hours to get the job done. 

This is what it looked like, before and after: 

Dense Blackcurrants before and after pruning. 

Gooseberries lethal and dense, versus Gooseberries taken apart by Mike; lots of air and space. 

Sometimes it pays to be ruthless! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast
from News Talks at Me.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Climb Pass is our man in the garden.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
Good morning, sir, A very good morning to you, Dr Jack.
Did you know that that whole reagun and stuff like that?
You know, I've just done that because I've been pruning
all the the black currants and the and the gooseberry bushes.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
What you been doing? Those contortions, you've been doing the kangaroo,
the root plass climb pass kangaroo.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
I knew. I knew you'd get into that because if
anybody asked me do you like breakdancing? I always point
out that I used to have rheumatoid arthritis and now
have OSTIOI writers I sit there going like, well they're
the cheapest.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah, yeah, not my gig.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
I'm tennis. So but anyway, that's not a story. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
So is that timing year right? You need to start
pruning your beer?

Speaker 3 (00:55):
Yes? It is, yeah, and it was. Actually I've got
a really good old Scottish make Mike, Mike Waterston is
his name. He's my builder, but he's also good friend,
and he says, can you can you please tell me
to prune my black currants because I haven't done it
for a few years. I said, oh God, here we go.
He not only has black currants, he's got red currants
and gooseberries as well. And gooseberries are real buggers because

(01:17):
they're prickly as hecky. But anyway, so I took some
photos in the garden, and I think Libya will have
put them on the interwebby of what it looked like
before we actually had a go a couple of days ago,
and what it looks like now. And it's very, very simple.
These black currants. I love them because Julie makes the

(01:39):
most amazing jem out of them. So I don't eat
the berries themselves, but the gem is just anyway easy.
Every year, you do it if you can. I'm not
doing it every year because I don't always have the time.
But they are basically a multi stemmed plant, so they

(01:59):
come from basically the base where the roots are, and
then all these stems go up. If you get more
than six to ten stems, you really need to prune
them out so it becomes a bit spacious in the middle.
We've talked about it a lot with plants, yea, because
you know, if you've got very dense plants, you get
a lot of moisture, and then you get fungi and
bacteria and all that. So this can so keep it

(02:20):
a bit open. Secondly, go down to about or maybe
four feet high if you like. Okay, And and basically
the new plants will grow below where it's cut. Of course,
in the new and the new the new offsets that
are coming down. So that's basically the simple way to
do it. So that goes for the black currants, right,

(02:41):
and it goes for the red currents as well, goosberries.
As I said, prickly gloves, care for all that sort
of stuff, similar sort of thing. But you cut out
the really old branches. And you can always tell in
these berries what the old branches. They're darker, they're larger,
and and they're thick, you know, really thick growth. Get

(03:02):
get rid of them after five years, I mean, honestly,
get the new ones to do the job. And that
is basically how it goes now as it happens. A
day after we did this, we went harrier trapping in Leiston,
just in south you.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Know, yeah, he Harriet hawk trapping.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
Harriet hawks. Yeah, we trapped them in and banned them,
and it's always good fun. But that's dangerous too. But anyway,
if we've got these cages, and some of these cages
I put in the Leastern Black current patches, there are
acres and acres of them, and they can't do that
by hand like we did. They do it. They do
it literally with a machine that cuts it all down

(03:42):
at four feet and goes every two years. So that
to me indicates that you can be totally ruthless.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
That's good to know. So I don't. I don't have
any currents at my place currently, but I do have
I do have blueberries. So is there anything? Is there
anything I need to do right now for blueberries? Oh?
By the way, I've got an update for you in
a second.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
Yeah, yep, I go. No. I to be quite honest,
I don't. I don't grow blueberries because I always get
birds in my Yeah, and I checked those and it's
not that great. My currents and my black parents in
my blueberries and blue black currents and so on in
a cage with netti, so they shouldn't get in.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yeah, Okay, the update, Well, the the update was that
the plants that I was telling you about, I definitely did.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
So, Oh, you scraped them.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
I scraped them. Yeah, I went I scraped them, and
I was like, oh, yep, these are dinners of doornail.
I really tried. Yeah. So I've got rid of them,
I've dug them out. I'm just we're going to have
to restart. My wife keeps on saying that I keep
on screwing up everything in the garden. But I've tried
to explain it's all our learning process.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
No, no, you're saying you should do that.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yeah, this is what I see it. I said, Well,
she said, I can't believe you didn't water them. I said,
how many times did you order them? Sweet? Huh ah, dolisticity.
But I have decided already. But part of the reason
she was a little prickly was because I've decided that
there are already more things that I want to grow,
including I've decided that I'm I really want to have
a tamarillo tree. Oh it is so delicious. Yeah, I

(05:13):
just feel like, especially at this time of year, they're just,
oh my gosh, they're just absolutely outstanding.

Speaker 3 (05:18):
Yeah. And you gotta get good, good, so good soil, please,
good well bred soil. That is that's your that is
your investment.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
And water them. Yeah, it would be the key.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
Yeah yeah yeah that guys.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
It guys a long way as well. Funny enough, Thank
you very much, appreciate your time as ever time and expertise.
Rude climb past in the garden for Sadi his tips
on proning your currents in time for summer. We'll be
up on the news talks.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
He'd be website for more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame.
Listen live to news Talks he'd be from nine am Saturday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.