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Do you pick them off individually as they ripen or wait for the whole thing (what's it called in English? Truss? I call it a grappe but that's probably French ) to ripen like with redcurrants? They don't seem to be quite so dangly as the redcurrants anyway, although as my bushes have become so enormous I can't even get between them anymore for a good look. Some branches are now propped up on link stakes. My fault for pruning them like redcurrants.

I don't have any fruit bushes, but I remember being told that you pick the bunches, and then 'comb' them off with an old fork

So that will be 'like redcurrants' then (note to self rtbqs)
Seems to me they're generally so delicate that they'd get squished a bit picking them separately

I think the fork thing was for elderberries !

I find that most of mine ripen at the same time, it's only a few low down in the centre of the bush that take longer. So I pick them in bunches off the bush and then individually in the kitchen.
Mine are just beginning to go black, just the odd one here and there at the moment, but there's a HUGE crop this year.

That is interesting richierobins about cutting branches to pick them. That was once how commercial growers picked their blackcurrants, they cut all the branches and put them through a picking machine.
Then they invented the mobile blackcurrant picker (I have the distinction of building the first blackcurrant harvester) which made life a lot easier.

Millymollymandy wrote:Do you pick them off individually as they ripen or wait for the whole thing (what's it called in English? Truss? I call it a grappe but that's probably French ) to ripen like with redcurrants? They don't seem to be quite so dangly as the redcurrants anyway, although as my bushes have become so enormous I can't even get between them anymore for a good look. Some branches are now propped up on link stakes. My fault for pruning them like redcurrants.

we tend to pick ours as they ripen, but most years they all ripen at the same time so we get a decent bowlful, and if we've taken most off, we'll leave the rest for the birds/mice

we havent pruned ours ever either.. ever ever ever, and we've had it for about 4 years [if not longer]

Thanks everyone - but I thought you pruned blackcurrants in winter?!!! Gad - must go and consult my RHS fruit book (one of these days).

I do the fork thing for elderberries, but for red- and black-currants I pick them individually. It's a race to get to them before the birds eat them all, and if I waited for the whole truss to ripen, most of them would be gone before I started picking them. Don't worry, I always leave some for the birds to eat, I'm not greedy.

I've had mine in for about 5 or 6 years and haven't pruned them at all. They've been absolutely fine, but this year they do look quite straggly. Not too bothered, though, as I took cuttings last year to make new plants which will be planted at the allotment this year. Before I dig the old ones out and dispose of them, I'm going to take some more cuttings as a kind of insurance policy in case the others fail.

Well I decided to pick a few of the biggest and ripest blackcurrants. They weighed in at almost 1kg

Now I know why you shouldn't prune them like redcurrants, because it is not humanly possible to pick the amount of berries that there are on my bushes (there must be about 10kg between the 2) and I can't get around the bushes as they've all flopped their lower branches out horizontally and are all mixed in with the redcurrants now. Really they should have said 2m2 spacing for each currant bush, not 1m2 and I gave them about 1.5m2 each!

Chucked them in the freezer as I've yet to decide what I want to do with them! They smell horrible uncooked don't they?