Ribes petraeum 'Rock Red Currant'

[Ex. Hochschwab 1360 m., Austria]

Grossulariaceae: a deciduous shrub growing to 1.8m. Found in beeches or spruce woods, that grow on rocky calcareous soils. The flowers are pink-reddish, 4-7mm across, arranged in tight bunches, blooming in June. The edible fruit are fleshy, globose, red and very acidic in flavour. The leaves are about 10cm wide, webbed, with 3-5 triangular lobes toothed with glandular hairs. Native to mountains of Central Europe to the Pyrenees.

USES:

The fruit can be eaten raw or cooked in tarts, jams, and jellies. A red currant, the fruit is pleasantly tart when fully ripe. Whilst many people will find it too tart to be eaten raw in quantity, it makes a very good cooked fruit in jams, and preserves.

GROWING INFORMATION:

Alpine currant seeds have a deep dormancy within them, this requires a degree of patience to overcome and it is usually quite easy to get high levels of germination if the correct procedures are followed.

First prepare a free draining substrate into which the seeds are to be mixed, this can be a 50/50 mixture of compost and sharp sand, or perlite, vermiculite. The chosen substrate needs to be moist (but not wet), if you can squeeze water out of it with your hand it is too wet and your seeds may drown and die. Mix the seeds into the substrate, making sure that there is enough volume of material to keep the seeds separated. Place the seed mixture into a clear plastic bag (freezer bags, especially zip-lock bags are very useful for this -provided a little gap is left in the seal for air exchange) If it is not a zip-lock type bag it needs to be loosely tied. Then write the date on the bag so that you know when the pre-treatment was started.

The seeds first require a period of warm pre-treatment and need to be kept in temperatures of 20°C for a period of 10 weeks. During this time make sure that the pre-treatment medium does not dry out at any stage or it will be ineffective!

Next the seeds require a cold period to break the final part of the dormancy, this is easily achieved by placing the bag in the fridge at 4°C for at least 12 weeks. It is quite possible for the seeds to germinate in the bag at these temperatures when they are ready to do so, if they do, just remove them from the bag and carefully plant them up. When the period of pre-treatment has finished the seed should be ready to be planted. Small quantities can be sown in pots or seed trays filled with a good quality compost and cover them with a thin layer of compost no more than 1cm deep. For larger quantities, it is easiest to sow the seeds in a well-prepared seedbed outdoors once the warm and cold pre-treatments have finished and wait for the seedlings to appear.

It has also been found that fluctuating pre-treatment temperatures can give the best germination results and I have myself had excellent results by keeping the mixed seeds in a cold shed through the winter for the cold stage of their pre-treatment and allowing the temperature to fluctuate naturally. Ungerminated seeds can have the whole warm and cold process repeated to enable more seeds to germinate. Fresh seedlings can keep germinating for up to 5 years after the original sowing date.

Do not expose newly sown seeds to high temperatures (above 25 °C). Keep the seedlings well-watered and weed free. Growth in the first year is usually between 20-40cm depending on the time of germination and cultural techniques and developing seedlings are usually trouble free. Growth from the second year onwards will be much stronger -possibly several meters in length. Cut back excessive growth to make replanting easier and to make plant establishment quicker. Allow them to grow for 2 years before planting them in a permanent position.

Easily grown in a moisture retentive but well-drained loamy soil of at least moderate quality.

HARVESTED: 2020

APPROX. 20 SEEDS