Rhubarb: Part 1

A friend of a friend has an allotment that he shares with this man...

Somehow, I ended up with some rhubarb in my house a few nights ago. And yesterday I made it into a crumble. This experience reminded me how much I like rhubarb, and how I haven't cooked with it for years and years. Like 10 years probably. My parents had some and I used to love eating it. I would pull it, and "top and tail it" and cook with it. I remember having great fun cutting the leaves off with my very sharp knife. I liked to cut the leaves off in one motion, if the knife got stuck and I had to have a second cut then I was very disappointed.

A Plan is Formed

All these thoughts made me really want to grow my own rhubarb. I seem to remember my dad giving me the impression that it was difficult to get it established, but when it was going it would last for ever. That sort of put me off, but no longer. I am going to grow some, and it is going to be fricking awesome. I selected the most suitable part of my garden and got to work straight away the very next day. There were a couple of problems which presented themselves immediately.

• It is completely the wrong time of year for planting rhubarb.
• There is a giant bush of some sort in the way.
• The soil in that area is rubbish. Full of clay and rocks.

However, these three problems sort of work together to give, what I hope will be, a good outcome. I need to improve the quality of the soil, and by the time I have done that it will be march and I can plant away. And the first thing I want to do to improve the soil is get rid of that bush what is sucking all the nutrients out of the clay and rocks.

I never remember to take the "before" photo. So, instead of a "before" and "after", I can present you with a "during" and a "during".

The stump gets the first round, but I'll be back.

This is an artist's impression of what my garden will look like when Project Rhubarb is complete.  As you can tell I am also planning to add a peony. The artist didn't know what a peony looks like, so he added a nebulous green bush with some colourful dots on it.

A Tale Spanning Three Centuries

I spent a fun afternoon at war with the bush. It's hard work replacing a moderately acceptable bush with empty soil soon to be filled with weeds. The task of excavating the giant rootball was made slightly more interesting by the discovery of a Victorian coin. When it was all cleaned up it turns out to be a penny from 1889.

Difficult to believe, I know, but my kitchen work surfaces aren't actually marble. Instead they are MDF with a clever marble-effect surface.