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6 THE RURAL VOICE
Robert Mercer
Rhubarb gets a bum rap
Robert
Mercer was
editor of the
Broad v ater
Market Letter
and
commentator
For 25 years.
When we left for a visit back in
Ontario this spring, our small plot of
rhubarb was just breaking through the
compost cover. One month later
when we returned to Vancouver
Island in May, it was standing tall,
bright and cheerful.
It is always nice to have a plant or
two of rhubarb in the garden as it is
such an undemanding vegetable. I
would suspect that just about every
farm kitchen garden in Ontario has a
plant. That plant may be one of the
new varieties or possibly one left
over from a plot started by
grandparents many years ago. I have
seen rhubarb in hedge rows and along
the farm laneways. It grows just
about anywhere it is cool and wet
enough.
The persistence of this plant can
be noted by its tolerance for neglect
as it continues to grow long after the
old farmhouse has gone and only the
bricks or stone of the basement
remain. It marks, like a sentinel, the
boundary of the garden.
Rhubarb is much underrated. I
thought we might have killed ours
when we split it and transferred it two
years ago. It was in the wrong place.
We dug a new long trench and filled
it with a mixture of loose soil,
compost and homemade organic
fertilizer' based on canola meal and
kelp. It survived well.
Even if you are not a big fan of
eating rhubarb, that first picking of
the smaller, slimmer red stems,
boiled gently with very little water
produces a dessert that is different
from any later crop. This year it was
a spring time delight ... soft, sweet
and pinkish and eaten with custard
and a sprinkling of sugar.
Some of the new sweeter red
varieties of rhubarb are great to
freeze. Just wash, cut and bag and it
is ready when you need it.
My cousin in England grows
rhubarb on a semi -commercial basis
under large, tall terra cotta pots. This
open-air forced rhubarb is pre -booked
for sale in the early season because of
its flavour and tenderness. This
activity is more of a hobby than a
business and it shows that with care,
this much maligned crop can become
a specialty with a premium price.
Commercially I am told rhubarb
grows about 10 - 15 tons to the acre
in the green varieties with
exceptional yield to 18 tons per acre.
In some cases rhubarb can be harvest
for a second crop in August. As there
are no herbicides registered for use
on rhubarb weed control by hand is
labour intensive.
I have always felt that you just
stick the rhubarb plant in the corner
and let it do its own thing. But if
tended well, given sunlight and an
annual dose of manure, the new red
sweet varieties are a joy, not just a
laxative. It is low in calories and a
good source of vitamin C, calcium
and dietary fibre.
I never knew of the rhubarb
festival in Shedden, Ontario until I
tried to find out about its medicinal
properties, and then The Rosy
Rhubarb Festival came up in my
search. Good luck this year for the
biggest rhubarb leaf and the longest
and largest rhubarb stalk during the
10th Annual Festival held this year
June 7 weekend. If I was closer by I
would have'dropped in.
Rhubarb is known to have been
grown in China and Tibet 4,000 years
ago and it helped open up the trade
routes from China to Europe as a
medicinal herb. But for me it has
only recently made its mark. We got
so much taste, texture and value from
it for so little effort, it deserves a
better reputation.°
Deadline for the
July issue of
The Rural Voice
is June 19, 2002