Theo Markettos wrote:
Ah well, tis done now. The instructions that came with them quite strongly
emphasised that blackcurrants should be cut back almost to the base. Given
they started about 3' tall, I didn't feel that's the sort of thing that can
be ignored.

Fair enough. I noticed my original 'ribena' blackcurrant is doing well
today. That arrived as a 3" stick which you just shoved into the ground. I
had 2, but one just died off and never rooted (despite leafing up for a
while), no idea why. But since then we've inheritted someone else's plot
with a whole host of blackcurrants, a couple of redcurrants, and one
whitecurrant (which we put in ourselves a few years ago). We get billions
of blackcurrants!

The pre-existing redcurrants seem to fruit quite happily... despite being in
a buddleia thicket. This is a cunning plan for stopping the birds getting
at them - let the weeds grow so densely they can't get in. The currants
don't seem to mind.

Last year was the first decent crop I've had from the redcurrants.

I've hacked the newly planted (autumn) raspberries too. At least it means I
can see which canes are still alive...

I was just thinking how depressing it was that it was showing up all the
weeds. :-(