Chairman’s Chit Chat July 2023
I am exhibiting all the symptoms of that old joke “I used to be indecisive but now I’m not so sure.”
A while ago I mentioned I was considering replacing my blackcurrant bushes.
The decision has more or less been taken – or I should say the bushes have made the decision for me. They didn’t perform last year, so were threatened with being hoicked out. This treat of gratuitous violence often has the desired effect with plants to buck up their ideas – not so in this case. The crop this year can, at best, be described as “miserable.” Very few fruits and even they are pathetically small. All this despite everything I did to encourage them – careful, textbook pruning in December, a top dressing of fish, blood and bone in March and then a generous mulch of top-quality organic material.
I suppose I should come clean and admit that the bushes are long past their prime. Reading up on it, I learned that the expected maximum productive life span of a blackcurrant bush is seven years. Although I cannot say exactly how old mine are, I can tell you they have been living on borrowed time for several years.
Replacing the existing ones (there are four) will present me with two problems. And a headache.
First problem – what variety of blackcurrant should I invest in? The nursery catalogues and websites are overflowing with varieties to choose from. They all have glowing reports about the bumper harvest of gigantic, mouth-watering fruits you can expect. None of the catalogues or websites say “this variety is useless, the crop is sparse, the fruits are minute and tasteless and the bush is susceptible to every known soft fruit disease. Don’t touch it with a barge pole.” I think I will stick in the metaphorical pin and hope for the best!
List of varieties of blackcurrants
Second problem – where on the allotment will the new purchases go? At present the old ones nestle between the apple trees and the gooseberry bushes. Like many plants, roses being a classic case, you should not replant like for like. To minimise the risk of virus infection, the advice is to plant new stock as far away as possible from the original site. All my top and soft fruit is currently situated at one end of the allotment, so to follow the advice to the letter, I really should plant the new bushes at the other end of the allotment.
If a job is worth doing…. …….. the far end of the plot it is then.
I visualise this being a protracted, nerve-racking project!!