Pruning currant and gooseberry bushes

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We had a very sunny, warm day, yesterday, and I took this opportunity to prune currant and gooseberry bushes. 

Pink currant Champagne

Gooseberry Invicta as it will be later on in the season

Currants and gooseberries are very forgiving, and if you did not prune them at all, they will still produce, but not as much. As a child, I remember going to a summer camp where there was a very old and large patch of black currants that had probably not been pruned in decades. I would creep under the canes to get to a small clearing in the middle of the patch where no one could find me and where I would eat all the black currants I wanted. I thought it was heaven. Perhaps that is where my love of currants comes from!

Old brown canes to be removed - you keep the young grey ones

What you want to do when you prune currants is to remove the oldest canes (those that are 4 years old or more). It is easy to see which are the oldest. They are thicker than the others and tend to be brown (canes from last year are a very pale grey whereas the smaller brown ones might be 2 or 3 years ago.

One and two year old canes - the most productive

Unless you want to shape the bush, you do not shorten canes but remove them all together. Looking at them carefully, it becomes obvious which ones are the oldest and need to be removed. As I said, they are very forgiving. If you cut the wrong canes, you will simply get less fruit.

Leaf mulch and cuttings

Once I have finished pruning, I spread a leaf mulch on the ground. It prevents the soil from drying out and serves as fertilizer at the same time. I add a thick layer of leaves each spring, but by the following spring they have all broken down in the soil. I also save bits of the discarded canes to make cuttings. Usually I give them away once they have rooted. Some canes fall down and produce layering on their own. These I cut off  from the mother plant and also pot up.

Gooseberry canes are very thorny

Gooseberry bushes are treated exactly the same way. However, they are very prickly, and they seem to grow in a tangle which is more difficult to control. Because they have a tendency to root quickly where they touch the ground, they are always spreading outside their allotted space. As you can see, I don't like handling them.

With all these black currants I make a black currant liqueur and black currant jam, my favorite. You sometimes can buy real black currant jam, but it is pretty diluted stuff, and there is no comparison with home-made black currant jam, a completely different thing!