Fruit - Rhubarb
Rhubarb is rather odd as a crop, siince you eat the stems. (The leaves are supposed to be poisonous!) The plants are perennials, and die down each year, leaving a mess of decaying leaves which ought to be cleared away! New shoots start growing again during the winter.
Since you harvest the rhubarb by removing a stem, leaf and all, you need to take a certain amount of care, since the rhubarb leaves give it the energy to grow next year. When you have a new plant, it might be a good idea not to take any crop the first year, to allow it to establish itself. Once established, you can start taking the stems as soon as they are big enough. The early stems are pinker, and mild in taste. Later they grow more acidic. Usually, at some point, we get fed up with eating rhubarb, and allow the plant to continue to grow, and get its energy for next year.
You harvest it by just pulling at a stem, then cutting off the leaf and a bit of the other end. To cook, chop into pieces, then stew in a little water until soft. It will need a little sugar, but taste it to see how acidic it is. You can eat it with custard, or as a crumble or fool. The crumble can be made with raw rhubarb, so it cooks inside the crumble, or the rhubarb can be cooked first. For the fool, it's best to make a puree. If you have a food processor, use that on the cooked fruit to make the puree, but if not, slice it thinly before cooking, to reduce the length of the strands.
| My recipe for rhubarb: |
Crumble Fool |
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© Jo Edkins 2021 - Return to Garden index