The Family Kitchen Gardener (1856)/Currant
CURRANT.
Rìbes rùbrum.—Groseille à grappes d’outre, Fr.—Johannisbure, Ger.
The Red and Black Currant of the gardens are considered natives of the northern parts of Europe. The Black is evidently an inhabitant of a cool climate, for it rarely produces its fruit in perfection, the berries falling before being ripe. There are several varieties of Currants natives of North America, but very different in habit and character from those cultivated. There are few or no medicinal virtues attached to the fruit. “Currant Wine” is a beverage that was known to our fathers, but has been superseded by the more expensive and fashionable “Port and Madeira.” The fruit has a pleasant, cooling, acid flavor, relished by most individuals when ripe. From it there is a very excellent jelly made, an indispensable condiment to many fashionable dishes of the day. The green fruit is also used for tarts, but for that purpose is much inferior to Rhubarb and Gooseberries.
Rìbes nìgra, or the Black Currant, is a very rich fruit, produced in bunches of from three to five inches long, but requires a moist, cool situation, shaded from the noon-day sun. There are several varieties of it, called Black Grape, Black Naples, and the Common Black. The fruit is made into jelly or jam, and much used in consumptive complaints.
The Red Currant is a very familiar fruit, susceptible of great improvement by culture, worthy of the best care, and generally gets none. There are several varieties of it, at least it is grown under a variety of names. I have cultivated New Red, Knight’s Early Red, Red Grape, and lastly, May’s Victoria, neither of which excel the old Red Dutch that I cultivated twenty-five years ago. Red Currants and Raspberries make the finest jelly.
Champagne.—This is a variety evidently between the Red and White, of a pink color.
White Dutch.—The White Currant is preferred for the table, it being more sweet and palatable than any of the other sorts. It grows like the two preceding, and requires the same treatment.
Propagation and Culture.—The best mode of increasing this plant is by selecting cuttings of good, strong, young wood, about a foot long. The eyes from the lower part of the shoot, for about eight inches, must be cut out previous to planting, which will prevent suckers being thrown up from the roots. Plant them as early in Spring as the ground can be prepared, or late in the Autumn, just before the ground is closed with the frost. A partially shaded situation is most suitable, though they will do in any rich, moist ground; in two years they will make fine plants, when they must be removed to where they are intended to remain for fruiting, (suckers and layers should never be used). Their after-culture is merely to train up the plant to one stem, about a foot high, then allow it to spread and ramify uniformly, but never admit it to sucker from the root.
Pruning.—Thin out the shoots to allow all to stand free and clear of each other, then shorten back the young wood from about three to six inches of the preceding year’s growth. This makes the bushes spur, as gardeners term it, and on these spurs the fruit is produced. The plant must be yearly supplied with manure among their roots, digging the ground carefully every Spring or Fall. By this treatment the fruit will be like bunches of Grapes, and form a great contrast to the meagre affairs so generally seen in our markets. Even in our best gardens their culture is very imperfectly attended to, producing fruit all skin and seeds, and giving a very faint idea of the richness and perfection to which it can attain. Plant them eight feet apart, and if well treated they will last twenty years.