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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 classic tart, translucent red currant — too acidic to eat fresh in quantity for most people, but prized for jelly, jam, syrup, sauces (cumberland sauce) and baking. A real commercial soft-fruit crop across northern and central Europe.
- 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 — the most shade-tolerant fruit; crops on north walls (best yield in sun)
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.0
- Environment
- Temperate
- Native range
- Western/northwestern Europe — the exact wild range is genuinely blurred by centuries of cultivation (native vs. naturalized status is debated even in Britain and Ireland), so treat this as approximate rather than precise.
- Status
- Cultivated
- Years to fruit
- 2–3 yrs to a first crop, 4–5 yrs to full production
- Growth speed
- Moderate — reaches its roughly 1.2 m mature size with a light crop in year two and full production by year three.
- Spacing
- 122 cm (48 in) apart — about 1.5 m² (16 sq ft) per plant
- Leaf shape
- Palmately 3–5-lobed with toothed margins, resembling a small maple leaf.
- Root system
- Shallow and fibrous.
- Fruit description
- Smooth, thin, translucent-red berries (cultivars also come pink, yellow, white or beige), juicy and seedy, with a pleasant tart-sweet flavor; borne in long hanging clusters.
- Propagation
- Hardwood cuttings, taken dormant.
- Pollination
- SELF-FERTILE — one bush crops
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. Doesn't need heavy regular feeding — a general-purpose fertilizer in March/April after pruning is enough; particularly potassium-hungry for good fruit set.
Growing tips. Full sun gives sweeter fruit, though it tolerates part shade, including training flat against a north-facing wall. Fruits on 2-3 year old wood, so prune with that cycle in mind for yield.
Companion planting. Consistently documented as less susceptible to blister rust than black currant; the cultivars 'Viking' and 'Red Dutch' are cited as practically immune (moderate confidence, fewer sources than the black currant research).
Grow journal
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