I have been collecting red currants and black currants. Usually i take cuttings only. But for a couple of years have collected different varieties.
They grow happily in differing habitats throughout my garden. I have until recently always been content taking cuttings. But since food prices rise and général interest shifts toward making your own jams and stuff, where i am at least, i need more. So i was spreading seeds of blackcurrant (cassis). Just drop the overripe berries here and there.
But that bas it’s limits too. When i had a bucket of red berries i put them in the mixer shortly and sifted the slurrie. Leaving juice and a mix of skins and seeds. So now i’ve got maybe a thousand seeds which i will direct seed into a freshly composted new bed which will have to grow next season amongst veggies.
Anybody done similar?
Tips welcome.
M’y thinking is the following. Most red currants will have low germination rates. Maybe they’ve unconsciously been selected for delivering great cuttings.
I’d like to ideally grow berries that freely cross and pop up after birds are spreading them. You know. Natural spreading currants.
I’ve done something similar with strawberries. I had collected about a thousand seeds. I planted all of them at once, without looking at their germination requirements first. Not a single strawberry plant germinated. Next time I do something similar, I am going to look at the germination requirements. I am also not going to plant all my seeds at once. That way I can adjust my strategy if something goes wrong.
Currants are wild/feral here. Not maybe that much in the city where I live, but in the countryside there are many. They don’t produce that much as they often are in heavily forested areas, but I’m sure they would produce if they were given good conditions. I’m not sure if I’m going anywhere where they are this year or if I remember to look for them, but I could collect some black currant if i see them. There are some reds also, but some red varieties are not meant for eating so I would not pick them if I weren’t sure.
Mountain currant I have been taught not to eat. It’s not poisonous, but in culinary terms inedible. Never tasted one thought. Not sure how easy it would be to distinguish based on taste if it’s taste was something like very sour red currant.
Interesting, whenever I’ve seen volunteer seedlings come up, they have always turned out to be connected to the parent plant by runners.
I ate a bunch of varieties of currents last summer, then planted the feces in the fall. They germinated great in the spring. I moved them to a row in my garden. Mulberries also did well with this treatment, they started slower, therefore still grow in the seed-bed.
Service berries treated the same way had zero germination.
I treat strawberry seeds like tomatoes: Mash the fruits, and separate seeds after fermentation. They have germinated well for me without any special treatment.
Yes, that was just my case. Here mountain currant is common as ornamental and they might be more common as feral than red currants so picking any red looking currant might be mostly inedible and so I don’t feel picking them for seed to give. Not sure if they would cross also. Would have to be quite sure of what they are. There are plenty of black currants and I think I remember seeing some white currants also.
My currants at my old house were a bird gift. I never saw birds eating them, as you say, but there’s no other way that a currant seedling could have gotten into my yard. I didn’t know what it was at first.
I use them with black solanum. The combination is great.
Mulberry rarely grows here, therefore it does not distract birds from the currants and service berries – the only two berries common at this time of year. Chokecherry and hawthorn mature later in the season.
I have never observed a wild blackberry or domestic raspberry gone feral in my climate. A wild raspberry grows at high elevation, but not on the valley floor around my fields.
The amount of wild currents and service berries here far exceeds the birds ability to eat them. They have adapted well to desert growing conditions. Mulberry, blackberry, and raspberry require more water.
Out here on the west coast I had some success planting whole serviceberries and spit out seeds in a pot and forgetting about them. I grew other plants in it and at about a year after planting I am seeing sprouts.
But you’re right that Western Oregon has very different water patterns.
Reviving this old topic. So @Juergen has had some advice about blackcurrant growing. He says do not let them dry out. That probably was why i never had any succes growing from seed..
So i planted the seeds he send me, a mush of cassis berries(luckily well packaged) immediately. But also i tried putting them in the refridgerator cooling above freezing with sand and another part went in the freezer and is still in there.
I’ve yet to see ones popping that i planted immediately.
But after a couple of month in the cold sand the seeds in the refridgerator started to show roots, so that is at least something that works. I’ve planted them out, but now it’s autumn and they only have 2 cotylons so i brought them in under lights to beef them up to at least some true leaves. Which is work, and costs electricity and money and takes space in my house full of drying seeds, herbs, so me no like much.
So… my big hope is that the ones that are now in the freezer will survive that long time since summer in there and i can put them in damp sand and keep them in the cool refridgerator so they wake up just in time for a spring planting. Which is less work and takes less space and time and money. But maybe the ones that i planted directly survived the hot and dry summer somehow, that would be the most natural way.
Anybody any news or comment about this?
I grew about 200 bushes of black currant in 2025 from seed. I just strained the seed out from the fruit and dried the seed like everything else. Then I think I sowed the seed outside in late winter to cold stratify them. That’s what I usually do with woody species and perennials. In my country that’s around januar. They germinated well.
I am wondering @malterod that dried berry seeds are well germinating.
In the german “Handbuch der Pflanzenzüchtung” Band VI, p. 466 R. Bauer writes: “Wie die Grossularia zeigen auch alle Ribesia einen starken Abfall der Keimfähigkeit und Auflaufgeschwindigkeit bei Samentrocknung. Sofortiges und tiefes Stratifizieren (Fürtauer 1940) ergibt gutes und frühzeitiges Auflaufen bei Temperaturen um 7° C.” (“Like Grossularia, all Ribesia species exhibit a sharp decline in germination capacity and emergence rate when the seeds are dried. Immediate and prolonged stratification (Fürtauer 1940) results in good, early emergence at temperatures around 7° C.”).
The same you can read here on other small fruits: “In all the minor fruit plants the percentage of seed
germination was highest when fresh seeds were subjected for germination compared
to stored seeds, the viability of seed decreased gradually with the increase in storage
period.”
So, @Hugo, don’t be afraid about stratification of the seeds; they should not die because they are used to freeze in nature environments…