We returned from a short holiday last week, and it's amazing how much had changed in the garden !
I'll do a full journal in a few days, but this one is just to highlight a single very successful plant..... our whitecurrant bush.
I've just harvested 180 grammes of whitecurrants. Lovely and juicy !
We planted the bush when we first moved into the house, and it turned out to be a strange one. Whitecurrants are supposed to be quite sharp tasting, but these have a slightly pinkish tinge to their colour and are really sweet.
This year one or two of the sprigs turned out red - if I recall correctly, whitecurrants are a variant on redcurrants, so I wonder if this is something that happens as a bush ages. I'm really not sure how long a whitecurrant plant lives for !
With all the stems taken off and washed they're ready for eating. 10 grammes of stems etc were removed. They're so sweet they don't even need any sugar or cream !
The big difference this year that's enabled us to get a decent crop is that I improved the mesh over the bush.
Two years ago, pigeons ate the whole crop. So I put a mesh over the top. It stopped the pigeons, but the blackbirds were still able to get in and took the whole of last year's crop. So this spring I reinforced the mesh to ensure even the smallest gap was protected. It seems to have worked 馃榾
It's hard to get a picture of the whole bush, the garden has turned into a bit of a permaculture ! But here's a photo through the mesh from the side quite low down, and as you can see there are still plenty of whitecurrants still waiting to be harvested !
All photos by me