The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Growing => Fruit => Topic started by: Terry T on May 20, 2017, 09:48:43 am
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Hi there,
My fruit cage is full of lots of lovely gooseberries and black currants maturing nicely but the number of flowers and fruit set on the red currants and white currants is pathetic.
They are well spaced.
Have been in for 3 years.
Were manured and given a sprinkling of ash from the fire over winter.
Were pruned as recommmended by RHS to an open shape.
Are about 5' tall with the most flowers on the 3 year old wood and almost nothing on 2 year old wood.
Any ideas where I might be going wrong?
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You probably did nothing wrong. Likely the blackcurrants flowered slightly different time to the other currants and they got caught by a late frost or other weather difference at their different flowering times. My late blackcurrants are doing heaps better then the earlies.
Why put the blackcurrants in the cage? Birds leave my blacks alone and just go for the others and the blueberries. They only eat the green goosberries when so ripe I don't like them as much but they will take the black gooseberries earlier.
As you can guess none of mine are caged,...it'd be nice to have some blueberries caged but when i worked out the cost of caging the amount of soft fruit bushes I put in - well i could buy all i could eat for many. many years and have change.... so i stuck even more bushes in and share with the birdies... or rather try to get up earlier than they do to snaffle the new ripe stuff. ;D
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Goodness, where on earth are you to ahve fruit so ealry - mine aren't even flowering yet :(
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Goodness, where on earth are you to ahve fruit so ealry - mine aren't even flowering yet :(
It does say norfolk... that place way over east that's almost holland...whereas we westerly-cold-off-the-atlantic folk just have to wait. I'm llanfyllin and can see that just a few miles away towards shrewbury they're always 2 weeks ahead. here my goosegogs are 1/3rd sized berries, the early blackcurrants have lost their petals but the late one's are still in bud.
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Yes, we are in Norfolk and for the area our small holding is a bit of a frost pocket, so maybe the red and white currants do flower a touch earlier than the black although my impression is that they didn't produce the flowers. I'll give them another year and if I have no success will replace with dwarf cherries.
We put all fruit in the cage to make sure nothing got it. With the black birds rabbits deer pigeons and chickens, something was bound to investigate them.
Thanks for the advice.
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Tield on my dwarf cherries is disappointing so planted lots non dwarf as well.
How about blueberries...you can always acidify the soil if needs be. I dug pits filled with ericaceous to start them off and annually add sulphur granules or ferrous sulphate.
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We are also in Norfolk (West near Downham Market) and already have a ton of currants on all our bushes (except one that seem to have died for no apparent reason). The redcurrants are already starting to turn slightly pink. Redcurrants in particular don't seem to have a proper flower, it's more like a little pea pod that matures into the currant. You might still get fruit. Whereabouts in Norfolk are you, Terry, if anywhere near us you are welcome to some cuttings off my bushes I grew them all that way and, in our fen soil at least, they grow very quickly.