Growing Redcurrants in the UK: A Beginner's Guide

Why grow redcurrants?

If you want a fruit that gives a lot back for very little fuss, this is it. Redcurrants are properly hardy, they shrug off British winters, and one established bush can crop for fifteen years or more. They ask for almost nothing once they're settled in.

They also do something most fruit won't: crop in shade. A redcurrant will fruit happily in partial shade and even against a cold north-facing wall, so they earn their keep in the awkward corners of a garden where a strawberry or a plum would sulk. The RHS notes the fruit ripens slightly later and tastes a touch less sweet in shade, but you still get a crop.

Then there's the fruit itself. Those translucent red strings of berries are genuinely beautiful, they hang in heavy clusters, and they're loaded with natural pectin. That last point matters in the kitchen: high pectin means redcurrants set into jelly beautifully, and a splash of their juice will help other low-pectin jams set too.

One redcurrant bush, tucked against a shady wall, can hand you kilos of jewel-bright fruit every July for well over a decade.

Worth knowing: whitecurrants are the same plant. Same species, same care, same pruning. They're just a paler, sweeter version, lovely eaten straight off the strig. Everything below applies to both.

How are redcurrants different from blackcurrants?

This is the bit that trips people up, so it's worth being clear. Redcurrants and blackcurrants look like cousins, but they fruit in completely different ways, which changes how you plant and prune them.

Blackcurrants fruit on strong young growth made in the last year or two. So you plant them deep (about 5cm below the old soil mark, per the RHS) to force fresh shoots up from below ground, and each winter you cut out up to a third of the oldest stems right at the base to keep that young wood coming. It's a cut-and-renew system.

Redcurrants do the opposite. They fruit on old wood, on permanent little spurs that sit at the base of last year's shoots. So you grow them on a single short clear stem, build a lasting framework of branches, and keep that framework going for years. You spur-prune them, exactly like a gooseberry, rather than hacking out old growth.

Where and when should you plant them?

Plant bare-root bushes any time they're dormant, from November to March, avoiding days when the ground is frozen or waterlogged. Autumn planting gives the roots a head start. Container-grown plants can technically go in year-round, but a bare-root bush in winter is cheaper and establishes just as well.

Pick a spot in sun or partial shade. Full sun gives the sweetest, earliest fruit, but as we've said, a north wall or a dappled corner works fine. What they really want underneath is moist but well-drained soil with a bit of organic matter dug in. They'll cope with most garden soils as long as it doesn't sit soggy all winter.

Give a bush 1.2-1.5m of space. Short on room? Redcurrants train beautifully as a single-stemmed cordon against a wall or fence, spaced just 30-40cm apart, which is a brilliant way to fit several varieties along a sunny boundary.

How do you plant a redcurrant, step by step?

1. 1

   Choose a good bush

   Pick a two- or three-year-old plant with a short, clear stem (leg) of about 10-15cm and three or four healthy branches spreading from the top.

2. 2

   Prepare the ground

   Clear weeds and fork in a bucket of well-rotted compost or manure. Firm it back down so there are no big air pockets around the roots.

3. 3

   Plant at the same depth

   Set the bush so the old soil mark on the stem sits level with the ground. Do NOT bury the leg. This is the key difference from a blackcurrant.

4. 4

   Firm, water and mulch

   Backfill, firm gently with your heel, water it in well, and spread a mulch of compost around the base, keeping it clear of the stem.

5. 5

   Space correctly

   Leave 1.2-1.5m between bushes, or 30-40cm if you're training slim cordons against a wall or fence.

How do you prune a redcurrant?

Here's where redcurrants reward a little know-how. The aim is an open-centred goblet, sometimes called a wine-glass shape, with a permanent framework of eight to ten main branches radiating from that short leg. An open middle lets in light and air, which ripens the fruit and keeps disease down. If you've grown a gooseberry, you already know the drill.

Prune in late winter or early spring, while the bush is still dormant and before growth starts. There are two jobs.

First, the main branches. Shorten last season's growth on each leader by a quarter to a half, cutting just above an outward-facing bud so the branch grows out and open rather than into a congested middle. This slowly builds the framework in the early years and keeps it tidy after that.

Second, the sideshoots. This is the spur pruning that makes the fruit. Cut every sideshoot growing off the main branches back to just one or two buds. Those short stubs become the permanent spurs where next year's flowers, and then berries, appear. Because redcurrants fruit on this older spurred wood, you're building fruiting positions, not removing them.

There's an optional summer prune too. In mid-June to July, shorten the current season's sideshoots back to about five leaves. It's not essential for a bush, but it lets in more light to ripen the crop and keeps growth in check, and it's well worth doing on wall-trained cordons.

How do you feed and water them?

Redcurrants are hungry for potassium (potash), which is what drives flowering and fruiting, and they resent too much nitrogen, which pushes soft, sappy, disease-prone growth instead of berries. So skip the high-nitrogen lawn feeds.

In practice, a spring mulch of well-rotted compost or manure over the root area does most of the work and keeps the soil moist. Top it up with a potassium-rich fertiliser (a tomato feed or sulphate of potash) if your soil is poor. Bushes in pots need more attention: give them a high-potassium liquid feed every fortnight through the growing season.

Watering is mostly a first-couple-of-years job. Keep newly planted bushes watered during dry spells while they root in. After that, an established, mulched bush in the ground rarely needs watering at all, though container plants always will.

How do you keep the birds off?

Beyond birds, two problems are worth watching for. Gooseberry sawfly attacks currants as well as gooseberries: the caterpillar-like larvae can strip a bush of its leaves in days, usually starting low in the centre. Check the underside of leaves from late spring and pick off or wash away any larvae before they build up. And gooseberry mildew can leave a powdery grey coating on leaves and fruit in damp, still conditions, which is exactly why that open goblet shape and good airflow matter so much.

When and how do you harvest?

Redcurrants ripen from July onwards, depending on variety. They're ready when the whole string of berries is richly coloured, glossy and translucent, and the fruit feels firm and juicy rather than hard.

The trick is to pick whole trusses, not individual berries. Each string of fruit is called a strig, and if you try to pull single currants off you'll just burst them. Instead, snip or pinch off the entire strig at its stalk, then strip the berries later at the kitchen table (running a fork down the strig makes quick work of it). A bush crops generously, so pick over several days as different strigs colour up.

They don't keep long fresh, but they freeze superbly. Open-freeze whole strigs on a tray, then bag them up, and you can pull out a handful for a crumble or a batch of jelly in the depths of winter.

What can you make with redcurrants?

The classic is redcurrant jelly: clear, tart and glowing, and the traditional partner to roast lamb. Because the fruit is so high in pectin, jelly is one of the easiest preserves to get a good set from, which makes redcurrants a forgiving place to start. See our guide to making jam and jelly for the method.

They're wonderful beyond the jelly pan too. A few strigs bring a sharp, jewel-like note to a summer pudding, they cook down into a sauce for game or duck, and they mix well with sweeter fruits in jams and pies. Their tartness is the whole point, so lean into it rather than trying to drown it in sugar.

Related guides and tools

If you're building up a soft-fruit patch, these pair naturally with redcurrants:

• Growing gooseberries in the UK is the closest match, pruned to the very same goblet shape, so learn one and you've learned both.
• Growing blackcurrants in the UK is the deliberate contrast: planted deep, pruned by cutting out old wood, worth reading side by side so the difference sticks.
• Browse all our fruit-growing guides for the wider soft-fruit and orchard picture.
• Not sure what to plant or prune this month? Our planting calendar lays out the right jobs for your part of the UK across the year, including when to get bare-root currants in the ground.