Photo: Jerzy Opioła — CC BY-SA 3.0 · source
Survives zone 3 through 7
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
The genus's single most economically important species — source of cassis and crème de cassis, and the base fruit for Ribena and blackcurrant juice/cordial. Fruit is small, black and glossy, with a bold, musky flavor much better cooked than eaten raw; very high in vitamin C and anthocyanins.
- Hardiness
- Zone 3–7
- Habit
- Shrub
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- July
- Mature size
- Bush 1–1.5 m; excellent in containers
- Light
- Partial to FULL SUN — wants more light than red/white currant
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.0 (neutral) — intolerant of acid soils
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- Europe to the Russian Far East and Central Asia.
- Status
- Cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 2–3 yrs
- Growth speed
- Fast — RHS notes bushes reach full cropping maturity in 3–4 years.
- Spacing
- 165 cm (65 in) apart — about 2.7 m² (29 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Palmately 3–5-lobed, kidney-shaped with a heart-shaped base, toothed margins, resinous aromatic glands on the underside.
- Root system
- Shallow and fibrous, wide-spreading, concentrated in the top 20–40 cm of soil.
- Fruit description
- Marble-sized (~10 mm), smooth-skinned berries, dark purple to black, strongly aromatic with a tart flavor that sweetens as it ripens.
- Propagation
- Hardwood cuttings — the standard commercial propagation method.
- Pollination
- Self-fertile — no second cultivar needed, despite older advice to the contrary.
The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.
Growing guide
Fertilizing. A heavier feeder than most currants — work manure into the soil before planting, and potassium (e.g. muriate of potash) is particularly important for fruiting and disease resistance; deficiency shows as leaf-margin scorch.
Growing tips. Fruits mainly on young (1-2 year old) wood, unlike red currants and gooseberries which fruit on older spurs — prune out about a third of the oldest stems at ground level each autumn. The blackcurrant gall mite ("big bud mite," Cecidophyopsis ribis) is specifically adapted to this species and vectors reversion virus, a real yield-reducing disease.
Companion planting. The worst blister rust (Cronartium ribicola) vector in the genus — this is specifically why the US federally banned growing Ribes from 1911 to 1966, and why patchwork state and county bans on black currants still exist today (check current local rules; this changes over time). Rust-resistant cultivars ('Consort', 'Titania', 'Ben Sarek'-type breeding lines) carry a resistance gene that mostly breaks the infection cycle and led many states to lift blanket bans, though even a resistant cultivar isn't absolutely immune — a breakthrough infection on 'Titania' was documented in Connecticut in 2019.
Grow journal
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