My Mum doesn’t want all her soft fruit anymore. To be honest, I’ve been doing the majority of the picking & transforming into jelly for the last 10 or so years anyway. But I am very attached to the bushes and I don’t want them just chucked over the fence or burned. I gave her a blackcurrant twig as Mother’s Day present 30+ years ago and it’s now 6ft+ high and reliably loaded with large fruit on very handy long strings.

So this winter it’s coming to live on my allotment. Somewhere. We moved 2 of the truly ancient gooseberry bushes in February this year and they’re so happy they’ve now completely taken over a 4.8m bed at the plot.

Just in case my digging it up is fatally traumatic I’m taking blackcurrant cuttings as insurance. The 6 shoots I cut off in June have been sat in pints of water on the kitchen windowsill and have put forth lots of white roots as well as some very promising-looking green shoots at the base. Today they got to put their feet in compost and I am crossing fingers that they will take to their new home.