Bare Root Plants for Sale
Thank you for your interest and happy growing!
PLEASE READ: If you are local or regional to the Finger Lakes area (able to pick up in person), feel free to reach out to hello@edibleacres.org with a clear wish list of plants and we will work to arrange a pickup.
We update our inventory on March 1st for Spring bare root sales and September 1st for Fall bare root sales. If you are visiting this page and see everything as sold out, please make a note in your calendar to revisit at our next ‘opening’ and pick up some lovely plants!
Our Fall offerings tend to have higher numbers of trees, shrubs, cuttings and a medley of our abundant and fall appropriate herbaceous perennials. Spring offerings will generally have more herbaceous perennials, grasses, etc and a smaller number of trees and shrubs. We weight our inventory in large part based on seasonal appropriateness for establishment. We hope you understand and visit again if you don’t find what you are looking for this time.
If you are super eager to get plants now, we now have a Permaculture Nursery page that lists friends of ours with ethical and thoughtful growing practices. We strongly encourage you to check them out and get some awesome plants from them too!
TIP: Use the tags above to help filter our offerings by characteristic (ie. click on ‘fruit’ to find any fruit bearing plants we offer, etc.) As we add more and more it is a helpful way to find a plant to fit your goals…
Currants - Red, Black and Jostaberry
Currants - Red, Black and Jostaberry
Ribes family
Currants of all types deserve a place in the garden. Unlike raspberries, they tend to stay where you put them, and only require pruning once in a while. Red currants produce large clusters of sweet/tart fruit great for fresh eating. Black currants create larger fruits with very deep and complex flavor. All types are worth growing for their unique flavors, medicinal value, and ease of management.
We’ve found at our main nursery where deer populations can be absolutely intense that both red and black currants (josta too!) are able to live and produce strong crops with minimal to no damage from deer. Black currants are nearly immune, red currants are low browse and Josta can get nibbled a bit but grow through it. In an incredibly tough winter they may get browsed hard, but then recover easily the next year and get right back to producing! They thrive In woodland and hedgerow mixed contexts. Such a great family!
Current currant :) offerings at Edible Acres:
Red Currant - This is an unnamed cultivar given by friends a number of years ago. Incredibly productive, delicious, large red fruit. Can hang on the cane for weeks at perfect ripeness.
Red Currant - ‘Rovada’ - Considered one of the most promising cultivars, with huge clusters of well formed fruit with excellent eating quality. Choosing the red option now will give you access to this if we have enough stock, otherwise you get our excellent un-named red.
Red Currant - ‘Jonkeer Ver Tets’ - The absolute earliest Red Currant we know of, and very large and high quality fruit as well.
Black Currant - More productive in the shade than any of the other currants. The larger, jet black berries have musky, complex, tart flavors that some people adore and some need getting used to. Very nutrient dense fruit, and an excellent medicinal fruit. We will provide you with a high quality cultivar of our choice unless you request a specific type. Some of the named cultivars we grow and propagate include Titania, Crusader, Ben Sarek, Minaj Smirouj and a few other excellent varieties as well as selected seedlings from our own breeding work.
Jostaberry - Incredibly vigorous hybrid between black currant and gooseberry. We've been very impressed with the rate of growth, quality of fruit and overall health of our plants. Some people report very limited fruit set on their one bush. We believe you need at least 2, from different parents (not just a group of clones) to get good pollination.
A number of named cultivar varieties are being grown out and will be available at scale as we evolve. Inquire for more details or to see what may be available in small quantities, including Ben Serek, Slitsa, Red Lake, Crusader, Minaj Smirouj, Belaruskaja, Black Down, Consort, Improved Seedlings and more. If you have specific varieties you are really hoping for, by all means let us know and we’ll plan to provide you that as available to the best of our ability. Otherwise we’ll give you the best varieties (in our opinion) and largest plants we have available in inventory at time of shipping.
Cuttings Bundle:
We offer a very economical way to get started with your currant patch… Cuttings! Incredibly easy to establish, and an exciting technique to learn so you can expand your plantings in the future very quickly. This bundle will provide you with 10 cuttings of the size we use in our nursery. At least 2-3 nodes, at least 6” long and ready to go. Look below for a video showing how we plant hardwood cuttings. You’ll get a mix of black and red currants, unless you let us know specifically what types you are hoping for (josta, white, pink, Minaj, etc…). Cuttings are labeled as Black Currant, Red Currant and Jostaberry, freshly harvested and excited to root and grow! If you let us know at checkout that you have hopes of specific colors, names, etc. we will absolutely try our best to meet your hopes, just let us know, otherwise we default to great, diverse and non-name-specific :)
Also available are cuttings packs of specific varieties of Black, Red and Josta as well as a ‘super’ pack of 30-40+ cuttings for $50 that will help you kickstart a small berry orchard! We err on the side of way more cuttings over tons of plastic labels for each named variety, we figure most folks would want more plants than plastic, but if you would like each and every type labeled by all means let us know in ‘special requests’ at checkout and we’ll do our best to get you a lot of details :)
‘Grade B’ cutting packs can be super economical ways to get things happening on a limited budget. Absolutely viable and alive but perhaps a little on the thinner side, maybe bent, maybe a ding or two, these cuttings are $1 a piece but we almost always pile in a bunch more. Save money, give a scrawny cutting a chance and ramp up lovely numbers!
Size:
Between 3’ to 5’ on average but can get 6’ or more in ideal conditions. Josta can get much larger but we haven’t seen it yet.
Site Preference:
Loves sunny site with rich soil, but we get decent production even into the woods. Great candidate for the forest garden edge. Black currant types in particular are excellent shade tolerant crops.
Hardiness:
Zone 3
