Blackcurrant from seed?

[newbie]

Hi
I have found some self sown blackcurrant seedlings in the fruit bed, I assume from last years fallen fruit - they are definatley not any kind of sucker - If I pot them up and look after them, how long is it likely to be before they are old/big enough to plant out and fruit? More for curiosity than anything really - but it would be nice to nurture them to maturity

[Primrose]

Alas I can't help you as I've never been fortunate enough to have any blackcurrant seedling appear from a dropped currant - the blackbirds ferreting around have always mopped any dropped ones up before they've had time to germinate so I'll be very interested to see what happens with these nurtured seedlings. I get many blackberry seedlings appear from dropped fruit from my thornless blackberry bushes but they all appear with thorns and I pull them out. As I believe that most commercial currant bushes are sold from grafted stems, your experiment will be doubly interesting to watch. I wonder if they will eventually crop, or whether they will grow up blind and not bear fruit? I suspect you may have to wait a couple of years to see the results of your experiment. But we're patient people here, so we'll keep watching and waiting !

[newbie]

I have to confess I was quite surprised, its never happened before. I rubbed the little leaves just to be sure and they have that distinctive blackcurrant smell - they are only 2 inches high and have about 4/5 leaves. I have 3 varieties in the bed, Ben Conan, Ben Sarek and Ben Hope. I have potted them up along with the self sown wild strawberries they were amoungst so I will watch and wait as you say and see what becomes of them.

[Primrose]

Don't you just love it when these little freebies pop up, especially when you see the cost of buying soft fruit bushes from garden centres or catalogues???