Ultimate Guide to Planting Currants for Gardeners and Berry Lovers
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The vibrant color of currants reflects their richness in vitamins and micronutrients. Currants come in white, red, and black varieties and are considered a type of berry crop. Read further for details on their health benefits and how to plant currants.
Health Benefits of Currants
The health benefits of currants include their rich content of vitamins C, E, B1, B2, and PP, as well as micronutrients like potassium, phosphorus, sodium, magnesium, iron, and selenium. Currants also provide carbohydrates in the form of fructose, sucrose, glucose, and fiber. Due to these nutrients, consuming fresh currants can enhance your immune system, lower blood sugar in diabetes, increase hemoglobin levels, reduce blood pressure, and improve vision.
Currants are also effective for radiation-induced damage and anemia.
In cases of cold, sore throat, and hoarseness, drinking tea made from currant buds, leaves, and branches can be beneficial. Decoctions and infusions of the fruits have a calming effect for headaches, neurological disorders, and can improve sleep.
Currants possess properties that are vitamin-rich, anti-inflammatory, blood-producing, blood-cleansing, toning, vasodilating, and they enhance metabolic processes.
How to Plant Currants
How to plant currants, the tasty and nutritious berry?
Currants are planted using rooted cuttings or one-year-old shoots. The fall planting period aligns with that of raspberries.
In the spring, currants are planted earlier than raspberries because they leaf out very early. It is not advisable to plant seedlings with leaves because, although they take root, they suffer for a long time.
Planting currants using parts of old bushes is not recommended, as they will not yield any harvest.
To prepare black currant cuttings, cut them from well-developed one-year-old shoots, each 20-25 cm long. Then plant them in well-prepared soil enriched with humus. It is best done in autumn, from October 15 to November 15. If planting is delayed, store the cuttings buried in the ground, and plant them early in spring.
Plant the cuttings vertically in trenches or by making holes in the soil with a metal stake, inserting the cuttings so that only one bud remains above the soil. Press the soil against the cutting with another stake poke.
In the fall, there is no need to water moist soil, but in the spring, watering is essential regardless of soil moisture. After planting, mound soil over the cuttings, covering them with moist soil 8-10 cm deep so that after the soil settles, the bud is 5 cm underground. In spring, uncover the cuttings.
Plant currants by layering in a similar way to raspberries, but ensure the root collar of currant seedlings is 3-5 cm below the soil level, which enhances the survival rate of layered seedlings.
