[barefoot nellie]

Hi everyone, hope you're all harvesting as much lovely veg as I am! 

I am looking for any advice on blackcurrants, as I have inherited a large blackcurrant bush on my allotment. It has fruited reasonably well, but the fruits seem small to me. I have seen other bushes with huge fruits, so I'm curious what I can do to help them along better next year. I'm guessing a bit of pruning would help, because it is a bit overgrown maybe? I added a bit of compost around the base in the spring, and have also been feeding it a bit of fertilizer. The fruits are nice and tasty, just small. 

Thanks in advance for any bits of wisdom offered.

[gillie]

In the autumn cut out about one third of the branches that have fruited to make room for new ones which will crop the year after next.

Blackcurrants are hungry beasts (it is said that if you fall into a bush it will eat you!) so give it as much compost as you can spare and a good feed of fish, blood and bone or something similar in the early spring.

However the older varieties have smaller berries than the new ones, so you may end  up with lots more berries, but still of a small size.

Blackcurrants need a hard winter.  This year the crops are good!

Gillie

[solway cropper]

I'd agree with gillie about the hard winter bit. My crop this year is amazing with branches drooping to the ground under the weight of fruit.

You can combine the picking and the pruning by removing branches with fruit and then stripping them of fruit into a washing-up bowl in front of the telly with a glass of your favourite tipple to hand.

Much more fun than bending over a bush and getting back-ache. Well, it is at my age 

[Ivah]

Not only are they hungry, they are thirsty; which may be your problem this year. So as well as feeding them (I would use a large dose of Growmore) mulch them heavily (I would use at least 6" of FYM) and water them from setting to start of ripening.