7 Soft Fruit Bushes from Ken Muir for a 15-Metre Cane Row

With seven plants in a 15-metre run, the arithmetic gives a little over 2 metres per bush. That suits the larger Ribes and Rubus stock and gives compact gooseberries a more generous place than they strictly need. Ken Muir lists summer-fruiting raspberry canes such as Glen Ample at 45 to 60 centimetres apart within a row, so a cane row and a bush row need separate layouts before the first planting hole is opened.

Ken Muir sends a planting guide with each order, and the bush distances are explicit: blackcurrants at 1.5 to 1.8 metres, gooseberries at 1.2 to 1.5 metres, and red and white currants at 1.5 metres. Seven bushes on 1.8-metre centres use 10.8 metres of the 15-metre length, leaving space at either end for a rhubarb crown or a stepover apple where the soil drains well.

Fitting seven bushes into the length

Glen Ample, Glen Magna, and Tulameen are the three summer raspberry varieties Ken Muir has carried for years. Ken Muir sells them in cane form. At 50-centimetre spacing, a single 15-metre row holds roughly 30 canes, so the seven-plant arrangement belongs to a mixed Ribes border.

A workable planting list would be two blackcurrants, Ben Connan and Ben Sarek; two gooseberries, Invicta and Hinnonmaki Red; one redcurrant, Rovada; one whitecurrant, Versailles Blanche; and one jostaberry. Ben Sarek is a compact blackcurrant bred at the Scottish Crop Research Institute and reaches about 1.2 metres, which lets it sit nearer a neighbour without crowding the row. Invicta carries heavy crops and strong mildew resistance. Rovada is the latest-ripening redcurrant in general UK cultivation, extending picking into August.

Pollination in a mixed Ribes row

Pollination rarely blocks fruit set in this planting. Blackcurrants, gooseberries, and currants are self-fertile, so a single plant of each can crop. The jostaberry, a Ribes nidigrolaria hybrid of blackcurrant and gooseberry, is also self-fertile and fills ground where mildew has historically troubled pure gooseberries.

Soil work before delivery

Bare-root soft fruit from Ken Muir is dispatched from November to March, dormant and wrapped. If planting is delayed, the plants have a 48-hour window for heeling in.

The ground should be double dug to a fork’s depth, with rotted manure or garden compost worked into the lower spit. Ribes crops draw heavily on potassium, so sulphate of potash at 15 grams per square metre, incorporated into the top 10 centimetres before planting, addresses the dominant deficiency seen in older fruit gardens.

Drainage sets the tone for the first winter. A bush left in waterlogged clay through January can lose feeder roots before bud break. Among the seven, blackcurrants tolerate wet conditions best and gooseberries tolerate them least. On heavy ground, raised ridges of 15 centimetres along the row line lift the crowns clear of standing water.

Leaf mould on the surface

Leaf mould holds water without feeding the plant, which suits an established soft fruit row. A 7-centimetre layer of two-year-old leaf mould laid in March keeps shallow Ribes roots cool and suppresses annual weeds through summer.

Oak and beech leaves break down slowly and make the finest crumb. Sweet chestnut and plane take longer and remain coarse.

Feeding and water through the first season

Comfrey liquid plant feed supplies the potassium that fruiting Ribes draw down fastest. Bocking 14, the sterile Russian comfrey cultivar selected by Lawrence D. Hills at the Henry Doubleday Research Association, is the usual choice because it does not seed into surrounding beds.

Cut the leaves three to four times a season, pack them into a lidded butt, and draw off the black concentrate after four to five weeks. The usual dilution is about 1 part concentrate to 15 parts water, applied to the root zone every fortnight from flowering through fruit set.

The smell of rotting comfrey leaves is severe. The butt belongs at the far end of the row from any seating.

Rainwater can carry the comfrey feed as well as irrigate the plants. A rainwater harvesting diverter fitted to a shed downpipe, such as the type sold by Hozelock or RainReserve, feeds a 200-litre butt that comfortably covers a 15-metre row through a dry June. Mixing comfrey concentrate into rainwater also avoids the lime in mains supply, which currants tolerate poorly.

Excess nitrogen should be avoided. It pushes soft, sappy growth that aphids and mildew exploit, and on gooseberries it thickens the bush interior where American gooseberry mildew thrives.

A potassium-led regime keeps wood firm and fruit-bud heavy.

Pruning once the bushes settle

Blackcurrants fruit on one-year-old wood. After the third winter, remove about a third of the oldest blackcurrant stems at the base each year to drive new growth. Gooseberries and red and white currants fruit on older spurs, so they are trained to an open goblet shape, with leaders shortened by half and laterals cut to two buds in winter.

A cordless pruner comparison becomes relevant once the row is mature and the wood is thicker than secateurs handle comfortably. The Bosch EasyPrune and the Gardena AssistCut both reduce strain during repeated cuts on 15-millimetre blackcurrant wood. The Bosch closes through a single trigger pull, while the Gardena assists a manual squeeze. For finer currant spur work, hand secateurs such as Felco 6 still give better placement control than powered units. A seven-bush row produces enough winter prunings to justify a powered tool; many gardeners will still manage the work with hand secateurs.

Using a wormery beside the fruit row

Tiger worms, Eisenia fetida, convert soft kitchen waste and chopped soft prunings into a liquid feed and a fine casting. The casting suits potting more than the open row.

A wormery built from three stacked 50-litre boxes, with a tap drilled into the lower wall of the lowest box for leachate, runs through a UK summer without heating. Start the colony with about 500 grams of tiger worms, available from Wiggly Wigglers in Herefordshire, bedded into damp shredded cardboard.

The worms will not process woody gooseberry prunings. Those belong in the leaf mould heap or in a council green-waste collection. Soft blackcurrant tip growth, vegetable peelings, and tea grounds are suitable feed; citrus and onion make the colony stall.

Leachate drawn from the tap is diluted at 1 part to 10 for use on container plants. That keeps the wormery output separate from the comfrey regime feeding the bushes directly.

Keeping the worms below 25 degrees in a shaded position prevents the colony cooking in a heatwave, the single most common cause of a sudden die-off. A wormery left in full July sun against a south wall can exceed that lethal threshold inside a sealed box within hours.

Cropping over the first three seasons

Ben Connan can carry up to 4 kilograms from an established bush, and Invicta can give a similar crop from a well-pruned gooseberry. By maturity in year three or four, a seven-bush row produces enough fruit to freeze, preserve, and give away.

The first season after a November bare-root planting gives almost nothing by design. Energy goes into root establishment, and any flowers in that first spring are better removed from blackcurrants to build the framework.

Rovada redcurrant often lags the others and may not reach full crop until its fourth summer, the trade-off for late ripening and long strigs. The jostaberry fruits early and heavily and can dominate a mixed row if it is not pruned hard, taking ground that slower currants need.

At maturity, the branches begin to knit into a picking hedge. The established row can look orderly from the path and still hide its most awkward fruit in the shaded centre.