The rhubarb is starting into growth. 'Timperley Early' is ahead of the pack. It has already unfurled some of its tight, red, knobbly buds, revealing crinkly little bright green leaves on miniature red stalks. I planted 'Timperley Early' years ago, and by now the plant is huge, a good couple of feet across at the base, like a coppice stool, and invaded by bramble stalks that I have to yank out. I read articles about how I could lift, divide and rejuvenate it, and then leave it alone (though if I did divide it at least I could then have a proper go at getting the brambles out). It will get some 6X, that most potent and magical chicken manure powder, and a mulch of wood chips.
Rhubarb is supposed to be idiot proof, but I haven't found it the easiest plant to establish. One plant, bought (I think) from Homebase rotted quietly away without putting out a single leaf. Another was undermined by moles, and I think there may have been a third casualty, though it's difficult to remember after more than twenty years. This has left me with two other rhubarb plants, neither of which is entirely satisfactory, and neither of which possesses a name at this moment as I lost track of what I'd bought and what lived. One produces very slender, deep red stems which look as though they would be delicious, if only I had the heart to pick them, for the plant is such a weedy little thing and increases so slowly and reluctantly that I have never felt able to denude it of any leaves. The other sends up monstrously fat stalks, which don't taste particularly strongly of rhubarb, or anything else.
I wish I knew what my two vaguely disappointing plants were. I love rhubarb. I could happily collect it, and have to fight the urge to buy more when I see them in their tempting bags in garden centres, or gracing the pages of online seed companies. I would enjoy lining up lots of different crowns, all properly labelled, and then comparing the flavour, colour, thickness and stringiness of their stems. But one has to be sensible. The Systems Administrator does not even like rhubarb, besides which it can be a trigger for gout and the SA after once having had an attack would prefer never to have another. My rhubarb eating has to be a solitary pleasure, the odd crumble made for consumption when the SA is out, or for breakfast as a change from porridge. One gigantic 'Timperley Early' is honestly enough for one person, even leaving the other two plants out of the reckoning.
I don't bother forcing rhubarb. Some terracotta forcers are nice bits of kit, but I couldn't be bothered. I'm quite happy to start picking when it's ready, maybe freeze some for later in the year, and then stop picking as the plant starts to look manky and forget about rhubarb for the summer and all that soft fruit.
Rhubarb's only drawback (given that I don't suffer from gout) is the amount of sugar you have to put on it to make it edible. I like my cooked fruit on the tart side, to the point where I automatically offer any kind of apple pudding to guests with a bowl of sugar, because what tastes right to me will probably be too sharp for most other people, but I still need lashings of sugar on rhubarb. It was originally regarded as a medicinal purge, not a foodstuff. I ought to grow Sweet Cicely to go with it, a natural sweetener said to reduce the amount of sugar you need on rhubarb, but I've never managed to get that organised. Rhubarb leaves are apparently good for cleaning burnt bits off saucepans, all that oxalic acid.
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