How long do blackcurrants take to ripen?

[Leeds_lad]

Had fruit on my blackcurrant for about a month and a half now, and it's still green!
Do they usually take this long?

[rustylady]

They take ages - mine are just starting to colour up, but you need to leave them till they are really black or they are as sour as hell

[Leeds_lad]

They take ages - mine are just starting to colour up, but you need to leave them till they are really black or they are as sour as hell

Ah ok. Was starting to get worried =D
Was expecting them to have given up and simply start rotting off or something

[veggiechicken]

Mine are just strings of hard green bullets - they need to get much bigger before they ripen.

[FB.]

To some extent it depends on the season and the variety.
Someone near to me has long strings of 1cm diameter, well-coloured blackcurrants ready for picking when I had a nosey yesterday - variety unknown.
Mine are still little green peas.

The first of my White Versailles are almost ready.

[alldigging]

Taste one every three days.
The longer the better.. Until they start drying out maybe..

[Hans Mum]

mine are only just thinking abour ripening and thats only a few of them....think it'll be a few weeks yet with the lack of sunshine we've had

[FB.]

mine are only just thinking abour ripening and thats only a few of them....think it'll be a few weeks yet with the lack of sunshine we've had

Yes, it has been cold, very wet and sunless here in Cambs. The worst year ever.
We've had to run heating some days in June as it's been so cold. I've never in my life seen so much rain and so much cloud. The garden is usually parched by April, and usually requires heavy watering all summer just to keep plants alive let alone growing. But not this year; it will not need any watering. Plants which have struggled with the (normal for Cambs) severe summer droughts for many years are finally coming to life and growing normally.

We last had a dawn-to-dusk sunshine day on 26th May, and have had only twelve such days in 2012 so far, according to my solar panel logs. This year, Scotland has often had more sun, more warmth and less rain than us here. I've joked that I'd like to move to Scotland for warmer, sunnier and drier weather.
I am told that the Gulf Stream, North Atlantic Drift and other ocean currents have been knocked-off their usual path this year, which is why the UK is seeing a constant run of low pressure systems bringing heavy rain.

I'v lost two young-ish apple trees to sudden massive canker attack as a result of the very heavy and persistent rain we've had - James Grieve and Egremont Russet. More of my MM106-rootstocked trees are now showing signs of crown/root rot, encouraged by grossly abnormal rainfall making the ground rather heavy (but not flooded); the MM106's will be dead within a year.

I grafted a batch of apple trees onto strong rootstocks in late winter, and the grafts have only just healed and begun to open leaves. They'll be lucky to reach 2ft this season whereas they should be more like 4-5ft.
My "stoolbeds" for rootstock mass-production haven't begun to send up new shoots at all yet. I can't see me having any usable rootstocks for next winter unless I buy-in some.

All-in-all, a disastrous year. I'm thinking of adding some old rare Scottish varieties as backups for abnormally cold and wet years.

[chris]

My red currants have strigs ready now

Blacks are turning, and as FB my whites are almost ready too. Mine are east facing though (against a wall) so always are a bit later than my plot ones.

[otorongo]

I harvested mine ~ 2 weeks ago, but I've left some that were not ripe yet and I'm going to let them turn pitch black.

[sugar]

Mine are almost ripe...

[Vince G]

Mine are about at the same stage as Sugar's over hree in sunny Suffolk, although my bushes are only a year old so this is their first fruiting season....probably got as many on a single bush as shown in sugar's pic. Bit of Bramley, just enough for a crumble.

[chris]

Well, picked my reds last night - supringsly sweet. My whites, were ok but the tanin, or similar in them really did dry my mouth out!

Promptly plonked in the freezer until I decide what to do with them!

[BUFFS]

Our blackcurrants are just starting to colour up,but we are getting 1 days sun ,then 8 - 10 days cloud,and its cold,no fruit on some of the apple trees because of the cold,only the later flowering bramley is showing any fruit,it seems to be going like last year,when melons and peppers rotted in the g/house in the constant overcast, after a lovely may,we then had no real (20mins or more) sunshine til march...i dont want a repeat of those conditions for another full summer....

[Leeds_lad]

Just been out and had a look at them before the rain hit. They have finally begun ripening. About time =)