Well you’d know what I suggest lol, grow some crandalls!
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compared to other currants they are very drought resistant. only plant i didnt need to water at all during 20’ and 21’ summer droughts.
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Most organic fertilizers are natural products. They absorb more slowly. More of it is gathered over time, and by a wider range of beings. Synthetic fertilizers are less absorbed and almost all of it very quickly, so they pass through into the water table more quickly and you need to add more again sooner. They also kill many of the helpful microbes and soil food web. There is a lot of evidence about synthetic chemicals creating vast dead zones at the outflow of rivers. Along the Mississippi River it is huge and it damages crab, shell fish and other fisheries. Many industries have declined percipitously. We also need to be concerned that as we do more activities like this, the ability of the topsoil to remain in place and accept nutrition (CEC) decreases and we are trapped into more cycles or topsoil erosion, desertification, required synthetic fertilization and ocean dead zones.
John S
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This is more a function of either commercial farming or bad small scale practices, not the fertilizer itself. Just the most cursory familiarisation with the nutrient carrying capacity of your soil (the Cation Exchange Capacity) should set you on the right path to responsibly use fertilizers, whether organic or chemical.
Heck commercial farming for overpriced “organic” produce uses a lot of farm sludge to “organically” grow your veggies. Because of the scale we are talking about, hundreds of acres that also can experience water overflow, (something the “organic” label doesn’t care about) you can end up with a lot of nitrogen pollution downstream. It being “organic” nitrogen doesn’t make a difference.
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I agree that finding out about the CEC of your soil is not difficult, and more people should be able to do it. The extent of the problem shows that hardly anyone actually is doing it. Yes, you can find organic practices that are less than ideal. That’s one reason why many people are going further, not giving up. We are looking into permaculture practices, no till, cover crops or something covering the soil, adding more organic material to the soil, and mimicking the processes of nature when possible. Claiming that natural fertilizers go into the water table at the same rate that synthetics do doesn’t make it true. Fighting to continue polluting doesn’t make it right.
I started my Crandall currant from a tiny cutting many years ago and it has grown into a mature, fruiting plant, so it is definitely possible, and I don’t even think it’s hard.
John S
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Since your a lover of ribes you might be interested in the other clove currents besides crandall at some point Clove currants - great smelling blooms & delicious fruit!
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Holding a handful of your soil in your hands should give you all the functional information you need. My soil is basically gravel and a range of river rocks, my CEC is extremely low. Where I to use chemical fertilizers in say my lawn, it would be smaller amounts over the season. Not that I care to fertilize my lawn.
Heck clay? The problem is that while it has an amazing CEC nutrients are painfully slow to move through it; even dressing it with compost you are more likely to have nitrogen runoff when it rains. Spiking chemical fertilizers (drive a rod, sprinkle granules in the hole) pretty much ensures that it will not go anywhere else.
Personally I love finding cheap fertilizers at yard sales but my favorite way to use it is to add them to my horse manure pile, that’s what I amend my soil with. For fertilizer hungry plants (raspberries, currants) I do shallow but constant diluted urea applications over the season, up to the fall (winter here is not subtle, plants don’t miss the signals to go dormant). I monitor the coloration of the leaves to adjust the schedule; it is easy to tell when they are getting too much.
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I monitor the color of the leaves and add small amounts of urine over long periods of time too. Adding your fertilizer to the horse manure seems like a good idea. I wish others were as careful as you
John S
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I have a love/hate relationship with plants in the currant family; here not only they are pretty much the only plants subject to insect pressure. On top of that the more lush the leaves are the more tasty they are to sawfly larvae.
Damn if you do, damn if you don’t.
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We have awful bugs that eat up the leaves of the red currant, the jostaberry, and the gooseberry. They hide under the leaves and munch all spring. They mostly leave the aromatic black currants alone. I think they hate the smell.
John S
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Does Crandall need a pollinizer? I’ve seen mixed reports, and wasn’t sure if the ones saying it needed another plant were copy+pastes from the European black ones that do or not.
As a general rule assume that with plants in groups that need a partner but can do without, you still would want one. They can put out fruit, but the output thend to be meager and would do a lot better with another compatible plant nearby.
Heck some that need at least one pollinizer will do a lot better if there are three or four. Haskaps in particular will crop better the more generic variety is available to them.
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My crandall fruits well with no pollinizer.
John S
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OP said they’re shade tolerant. How will would they do on the North side of the house where they only get morning and early afternoon sun? Being able to put in something more than herbs or flowers would be nice.
Mine are currently on the west side of the house in between my house and the neighbors house. They only get 3-4 hours of sun per day and thats usually from around 11-3.
I don’t think that I mentioned that the crandall currant doesn’t get eaten by the evil bugs that eat the gooseberry, jostaberry and red currant leaves so heavily.
John S
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Black currant newtons sound worth trying.
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Oh man my crandall is gorgeous this year! This plant has survived being moved twice as we had to put pylons down to bedrock so our silly house stops sliding around. It is living under a bunch of shagbark hickory trees and doesn’t get a lot of sun at all. All the black and red currants I bought at the same time have been dead for years from an unknown diaease and not being able to overcome sawfly invasions. Sometimes my berried get black spots on them but otherwise it is such an easy going plant.
It has had pretty flowers for the last few years but THIS year it smells fantastic too. I understand now why it is called clove.
It also apparently seeded some offspring. That’s great because I’ve been rubbish at growing it from cuttings. I’m trying again to air layer this year. My pink champagne currant can root even if I just think about making a cutting but thus far, not my crandall.
I am wondering now, if I give away a seedling that grew a foot from the crandall and that is making flowers identical to my crandall, can I call them crandall still? I don’t think anything was close enough for cross pollination from anything and the flower is the same but I don’t want to mess stuff up either.
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Seedlings should not be distributed under the same name, but it’s probably a sucker and not a seedling. Dig it up and find out.
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For a nearly fool proof propagation method, try simple layering. Bend a branch to the ground, lay it in a shallow trench and place a rock to keep it in place. Crandall branches are pretty long, so you could even try serpentine layering. You should have rooted layers to plant next year
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