Early Spring Rhubarb breaking Through

What Does Rhubarb Mean to You

• Rhubarb is a vegetable that thinks it is a fruit and has royal pretensions with top varieties called Victoria and Early Albert
• Rhubarb Rhubarb Rhubarb is an indistinct chant  or none sense word shouted out in an unsynchronised manner at a public event.
• ‘A rhubarb’ is baseball slang for a fight or argument among players.
•   “Stop talking rhubarb”. Complete and utter balderdash and b*****s.
• Stewed or in a pie it is the food of gods. Even raw with the stick end just dipped in a little sugar – gear nosh.
• Already his year I have had Rhubarb flavoured gin and a special cider flavoured as Rhubarb and custard.
• According to some ‘Its very name means “food of the barbarians” the people who live beyond the Rha, now the river Volga’.
• To some less fortunate Rhubarb is a strong purgative.

In Praise of Growing Rhubarb

• It is one of the earliest crops in the garden.
• It can be forced into even earlier cropping if kept in the dark with a bit of warmth eg from a straw wrapper in an upturned bucket. The stems will then be thin, blanched pink and juicy.
• Rhubarb is hardy and if fed and watered will produce for many years.
• The big leaves are easy to compost. Even though they contain Oxalic acid they do no harm in the compost heap.

Young Stems