Kitchen Garden Forum

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

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 !

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.

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???