06.15.2010

Currant Bushes…..

….make for fabulous landscaping!  Last year when I needed some quick and cheap bushes for the front of our house, I chose currant bushes.  Mostly because when I priced the ordinary boxwood, they were $25 each for a 2 gallon, really small plant!  I wanted something fast, don’t we all?!!  Plus, I’d rather grow something that’s edible.

currant-bushes

After just a couple months of planting these last year, they doubled in size.  And this year they came back in full force and loaded with currants, red and black.  Might I add that each bush was a whopping $12 each!  That’s more like my kinda price.

currants-on-the-bush

The currants started to ripen last week and man are they beautiful!

bowl-of-currants

The first batch was small, but I smashed them with my grandma’s old berry masher…..

the-masher

smashed-currants

And then I froze the juice from that batch that I’ll add to this week.  I found a great jelly combination last year…..mulberry and currant berry jelly!  Both ripen at the same time.  They are tedious to pick because of their small size, but so worth it in the end!

I’ll end with what I saw while smashing berries.  The “girls” always give me a smile no matter what they are doing.  I added a new drinking tub to the yard.  Guess it’s a “bath” tub now!

duck-in-a-tub

Filed Under DUCKS, GARDENING 

Comments

  1. Kendall on 2010.06.15

    Yum!!!

    Can’t believe it’s berry time there already…. still another 2 months for us!

  2. wendy on 2010.06.15

    Great photography! I should try currant bushes at my house, I need shrubs in front of my windows. I wonder if they’ll grow in Austin?

  3. Ann on 2010.06.15

    Oooo that jelly sounds yummy. So you just freeze the juice until you have enough to make a batch of jelly with the juice of each?

    LOL - Love the duck pictures - they’re too cute!

  4. Tracy on 2010.06.16

    Just thought you might want to know that your grandma’s old berry masher is probably acutally a tool called a China Cap. My grandma left me one that has a tri corner stand and the pestle is painted a strange shade of green (I think she stopped using it for her canning and painted it so she could use it for display).

  5. Rozmin on 2010.07.03

    If you smash up black currants with honey, it’s really tasty. :-)

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