Currants and gooseberries to grow

Plant features

Late autumn to early winter is the perfect time to plant soft fruits such as gooseberries, redcurrants, whitecurrants and blackcurrants. If you plant a selection of these compact, easy-to-grow shrubs, you’ll get harvests over a long season.

Choose a sunny site, either on the veg plot, in a border or against a south- or west-facing wall. Dig a generous hole, fork plenty of garden compost into the base, then stand the plant in the hole. Back-fill around the rootball with soil, firm down, then water in well. Continue to water regularly.

Varieties to try

Blackcurrants

‘Ben Connan’ - a compact plant, so it's an ideal choice when space is tight. It produces large tasty berries.

‘Ben Hope’ - resistant to mildew, this variety produces a heavy crop of delicious fruits.

‘Ben Sarek’ - this variety produces an abundant harvest of large juicy berries from mid-July, on a neat, compact bush.

Gooseberries

‘Invicta’ - a heavy-cropping variety that’s very resistant to mildew. The fruits are great for freezing and for making into jam.

‘Martlet’ - the bright red dessert berries are delicious and ripen in midsummer.

‘Rokula’ - these early ripening, dark red fruits are sweet enough to eat uncooked. The plants are compact, resistant to mildew and high yielding.

Redcurrants

‘Redstart’ - bears bright red fruits that begin ripening in the second half of August.

‘Laxton’s Number One’ - a heavy cropper producing big, glossy berries with a particularly good flavour.

‘Jonkheer van Tets’ - one of the earliest to ripen, from early July, this variety has large, bright red fruits that are juicy and delicious.

Whitecurrants

‘Blanka’ - the heavy crop of large sweet white berries, borne in abundant long clusters, ripens during August.

‘White Grape’ - the fruits have a sweet flavour and are almost white in colour.

‘White Versailles’ - a popular mid-season variety, it has pearly white fruits with a fine, sweet flavour. It crops reliably and well.

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