Gadenin日本語Get the appReading ripeness on a strig
The fruit hangs in strings called strigs, usually six to twelve berries long, and they do not all ripen together. The berry nearest the stem colors first and the tip of the strig lags several days behind. A berry that has just turned black is not ready: it is still sharp, still firm, and it will taste thin in anything you cook. Give it another week on the bush after coloring and the sugar climbs sharply.
The reliable test is touch and taste rather than color. A ripe berry is glossy black, gives very slightly when squeezed, and parts from the strig with almost no pull. Taste one from the tip of a strig, not from the top: if the tip berry is sweet enough to eat, the whole strig is ready.
Blackcurrants hold on the bush better than most soft fruit once ripe, so there is no need to rush. The limits are the birds, which will take them the moment they color, and heavy rain after a dry spell, which splits them.
| Sign | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Berries green, strig standing out | Two to three weeks off | Water in dry weather, get the net on |
| Top berries black, tip still red | Almost there, but sharp | Leave the strig; check again in a few days |
| Whole strig glossy black, hanging heavy | Ready | Pick the strig whole |
| Berries dull and slightly soft | Past best, sugars breaking down | Pick now and use for cooking or freezing |
| Split skins after rain | Sudden water uptake after dryness | Pick immediately; split fruit molds within a day |
| Berries shriveled on the strig | Drought at fruit set, or mildew | Pick off and check watering and shoot tips |
Pick the strig, not the berry
Trying to pick individual blackcurrants is slow, and it damages the fruit. The berry has a thin skin and a small stalk, and pulling it off leaves a wet tear where the stalk came away. That tear is where mold starts, which is why singly picked fruit goes over in a day while whole strigs keep for the best part of a week in a cool place.
So take the whole strig. Hold the strig stem between finger and thumb where it joins the shoot and pull it away with a slight sideways twist; it comes cleanly. Lay strigs in a shallow container rather than filling a deep bucket, because blackcurrants crush under their own weight surprisingly easily. Then strip the berries off the strigs indoors, sitting down, at whatever pace you like.
Stripping is easy once you know the trick: run a fork down the strig with the tines between the berries and they drop off in a shower. A frozen strig is even easier, and this is why the freezer route below is worth knowing.
- Pick in the morning, when it is dry Fruit picked wet molds quickly and stains everything. Wait until dew has gone, and do not pick during or straight after rain if you can avoid it.
- Work bush by bush, outside in Start with the outer strigs, which ripen first because they get the most light, then reach into the middle. Going back over one bush properly beats skimming three.
- Take whole strigs into a shallow tray Pull each strig off at its stem with a slight twist. Keep the layer of fruit no more than about 4 inches (10 cm) deep so the bottom is not crushed.
- Get the fruit into the shade at once Blackcurrants heat up fast in a picking tray left in the sun and go soft within an hour. Move each full tray straight into shade or indoors.
- Strip the berries with a fork Hold the strig by the stem over a bowl and run a table fork down it, tines straddling the stem. The berries come off in seconds and the stalks stay on the strig.
- Go back over the bush later in the week Strigs on the inside and lower down ripen several days behind the outside. Expect two or three passes over a week to ten days to clear a mature bush.
Do not strip the leaves off with the strigs. Leaves torn away while picking take with them the buds at their base, and those buds are part of next year's shoot growth.
What a bush should give you
A young bush in its second cropping season gives very little, and that is normal. Yield climbs steeply as the stool builds, peaks once you are into a proper renewal pruning cycle, and then stays there for many years as long as the old wood keeps coming out. A bush that suddenly halves its yield is telling you something: either it is short of nitrogen and water, or the old wood has not been removed, or it has picked up gall mite and reversion.
Use the numbers below as a check on your own bushes rather than a target. What matters is whether a given bush is going up or down against its own previous years.
| Bush age | Typical yield | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Second growing season | Nearly nothing | Correct; the bush is building stems, not fruit |
| Third season | 2 to 3 lb (1 to 1.5 kg) | First real pick; the stool is filling out |
| Fourth season onward | 8 to 12 lb (3.5 to 5.5 kg) | Full production for a well-fed, renewal-pruned bush |
| Old bush, unpruned | 2 to 4 lb (1 to 2 kg) of small berries | Needs renovation; the wood is too old to crop |
| Any age, sudden collapse in yield | Half of last year or less | Check for swollen buds and reverted leaves |
Keeping the crop
Fresh blackcurrants keep four to six days in a cool place if they are dry and still on the strig, and about two days once stripped. That is a short window, so most of a crop goes into the freezer, and blackcurrants freeze better than almost any other fruit because the skins are tough and the flavor holds.
Freeze them on the strig if space allows. Lay the strigs in a single layer on a tray, freeze solid, and the berries then knock off the stems with a shake, cleaner and faster than any fork. Bag the loose frozen berries and they stay usable for a year or more. There is no need to wash them beforehand unless they are splashed with soil; washing adds water that turns to ice inside the bag.
Do not bother sorting out slightly under-ripe berries for cooking. Blackcurrants are almost always cooked with sugar, and a proportion of sharp fruit is no problem. It is the split, moldy and shriveled ones that need to come out, and they are easy to spot while stripping.
Record the picking dates and the weight from each bush, bush by bush, using the numbering from your planting sketch. Over three seasons that record shows you which stools are declining, and comparing the first picking date year to year tells you how much your season really shifts, which is more useful than any calendar.