Rhubarb Comeback

When it comes to food gardening, whether you’re a newbie or have been doing it forever, I like to call rhubarb the perfect crop!

It’s super easy to grow: Spread a little compost around the crown once or twice a year, keep it reasonably well watered and weeded, and you’re rewarded with loads of rosy-pink stalks. 

Rhubarb will continue to grow being potted up for a while, and also tolerates transplanting fairly well.

Although voles will eat the roots, it doesn’t have much in the way of other pests. Plus raising your own rhubarb saves you money! At our local co-op, organic rhubarb is $4.99/lb. Ouch!

It’s easy to process too, and can be used in both sweet and savory recipes. So as a staple food crop, you really can’t go wrong with rhubarb…

Only you actually can.

I’ve gone wrong the last few years with my four crowns. With lots of outside family commitments, I fell down on the job with weeding. A few seasons with weed overwhelm, and the crowns’ production declined significantly. 

I figured my rhubarb, now over 15 years old, was at the end of its life span. I would clearly need to buy brand new crowns from the nursery and start over.

Last summer, one looked especially bad, pretty much near death’s door. So I said a regretful “Sayonara” and tore out all the roots, which I talked about in my previous “Garden Explosion” post. I even mulched the whole area with some scraps of lumber, to kill the surrounding weeds. 

I made sure that crown would be a goner.

However…despite the advanced age of my three remaining crowns of rhubarb, last fall I finally took on the horsetail and buttercup invasion around them, and spread some compost to cover the drip line. And what do you know…

This spring’s crop is the best I’ve had in years! 

Processing rhubarb—all you need is a sharp knife!

From my three producing crowns, I picked 52 stalks. Cut into cubes courtesy of my husband John, the processed crop produced four and a half quarts. 

The little crown that could—the fourth rhubarb crown I tore out and is now coming along nicely—won’t produce any kind of crop this year and very likely not next year either. But I’m going to treat it right this summer!

Rhubarb rising from the dead and now chugging along

I’m heading out to the garden shortly, to give this baby restarted crown lots of compost. After I weed the three other harvested ones, they’ll get some top-dressing as well. 

So when life gets crazy and you’ve had to neglect your perennial food crops—with a little TLC, you may find they can bounce back!

Garden Explosion!

You never know how fast Mother Nature can work until you leave her to her own devices…

When I left home for a few days in early May, the woods hadn’t yet leafed out, the perennial crops were just barely emerging from the soil, and the raised beds were free of weeds. Upon my return this past weekend, I almost didn’t recognize my own garden! 

In my absence, the yard had burst into a sea of green… And finally, all the trees had actual leaves!

But the downside…

Horsetail was everywhere. Most of the invasive, narrow shoots were at least eight inches high, some were as tall as a foot: filling the vegetable beds, the paths, and any spot of soil that didn’t have a plant in it. 

And while I’ve made my peace with dandelions (well, almost, I’m pretty sure) because they’re so pollinator-friendly, I couldn’t help feeling a bit a dismay to see the wall-to-wall yellow blossoms around the yard. 

But the upside of Spring being sprung…

Rhubarb ready to harvest

The saucer-sized rhubarb leaves were now as big as dinner plates, the tall stalks ready for harvest! (By the way, I priced organic rhubarb yesterday…$5.99/lb.!) 

The week before

And I found a rhubarb bonus:last fall, I had a crown that had given  up the ghost. Producing only tiny leaves all summer, the plant was surely a goner. I put it out of its misery by digging out the roots, covering the area with mulch and said a regretful bye-bye.

I came home to find a leaf sticking out from the cardboard mulch covering the crown. I pulled away the cardboard, and…Voila! Alive!

Rhubarb rising from the dead!

Then there’s the asparagus…I’d left a bed with four little spears. I returned to a harvest-ready crop—and now I’m picking about 15-20 spears each day.

And strawberries. I was concerned for my first-year beds after the last Northeaster front heaved the crowns right out of the soil. But while I was gone…they grew six inches! 

Strawberries putting on growth!

Finally, a different kind of explosion…

Two days ago, I looked across the yard at my blueberry patch and noticed something odd about the old cedar stump in between a couple of shrubs. 

Back when my husband John and I created our blueberry patch, the stump had resisted every effort to dig it out. 

And we knew very well that cedar takes forever to break down. That’s why we still have gigantic slabs of cedar logs littering out woods from a clear cut decades ago.

Anyway, we ended up just leaving the stump right where it was—and it’s been impervious to being removed ever since.

Then Nature took a hand. Yesterday, I went into the patch to check out the strange-looking stump. The short piece of hardware cloth at the entry to the patch (for rabbit protection) was bent over.

As for the stump…It was like a mini-bomb had been planted in its center.

Chunks of stump, large and small, lay in a circle around it. Red “sawdust” from it’s center was everywhere. Yet small holes punctuated the whole inside of the stump.

Well, it didn’t take a genius! There had to have been ants or grubs in that stump, that some enterprising critter snacked on by pulling apart the stump.

The question was, what animal could have been strong enough to destroy the stump?

We’ve had bears get into our orchards and the last time, one did a number on the biggest stump in our yard…but that was an easy guess. The bear had also climbed our crabapple tree and broke it in half. 

Plus it did another kind of number…that is, left an unmistakable calling card!

As for this stump…there was absolutely no damage to the two blueberry shrubs surrounding it. It was like the animal meticulously dug into the stump, had a nice meal, then politely exited.

John and I are guessing a raccoon did the deed—although I’ve never seen one in the neighborhood, much less our yard.

Still, there’s always a first time. So you can bet I’ll be keeping watch for those guys from here on out!

Homestead Diary--Rainy Day Version

 Last fall, inspired by the celebrity chef diaries in Food Network Magazine, I posted about a day in the life here on Berryridge Farm, and the various outdoor chores that filled the day. (See my October 7, 2021 post.) This spring, we've had so very many rainy days, that we haven't had a full day of dry weather in what seems like forever! So here’s a recent day of indoor activities, brought to you by yours truly.

The rain was pouring down when I got up, so I figured it would be a writing day. Since we were getting low on bread, it would also be a baking day. Now that the bakery seed bread we like is up to $8.25/loaf, I’ve been cutting back on buying it, and relying more on my homemade bread.

So before breakfast, I started the “sponge” for my favorite hearty seed bread: warm water, yeast, a dollop of honey and white flour, and set it on the counter, covered by a clean towel, to let the yeast do its thing. (You can find the bread recipe in my April 21 post.)

After breakfast, I worked on my latest Irish novel for a couple of hours. The book is finished, but I’m still in the checking-for-typos and polishing stage. It’s also one of the longest books I’ve written, so this part of the process is really taking a l-o-n-g time!

By this time, the sponge was all bubbly and ready for the next step: mixing in the oil, honey, flours, seeds and salt. Once all the ingredients were incorporated, I kneaded the dough for 8-10 minutes. Then set it back in the bowl, covered it again with the towel, and into the oven to rise.  

(Tip: putting your bread dough in the oven to rise works great—it’s a spot free of drafts that might affect the rising process. Simply keep the oven light on, and it’s just enough warmth to get a nice, consistent rising.)

Back to the computer. Publishing activities instead of writing this time. I added two of my titles to a “new-to-me” ebook retailer, which took about an hour and 45 minutes. It was still pouring rain—no chance for working in the garden—so I took a little break, stretched and moved around.

I returned to writing: this time for a blog post. Composing it and posting took another hour or so.

Time for another break from the computer! By now, the bread dough had risen nicely, and was ready for the second rise. I kneaded the dough for a couple of minutes, then set it in a buttered bread pan, and back in the warm oven.

I was overdue for my usual late lunch: a big bowl of yogurt and some roasted nuts. The rain hadn’t let up, so I did some email. Twenty minutes or so.

By now, I was stiff from sitting and desperately needed some fresh air. Rain or not, I’d get to some outside chores. 

I changed into my grubby gear and visited our hen, gave her some fresh feed, and cleaned up her pen. With her all taken care of, I ferried our day’s worth of kitchen scraps into the outdoor bucket, which will be added to the compost pile when it’s not soaking wet!

Small harvest this year

And it was still pouring rain. But we were out of fruit in the house! So I picked the rhubarb—a sad harvest this year, with so much cold and rain I hadn’t kept the area weeded.

Instead of our former foot-and-a-half long stalks, these scrawny specimens were about 9 inches long. By the way, do not underestimate what too many weeds will do to your food-gardening production!

Then I harvested the few spears of asparagus that were ready—with the cold rain, the asparagus doesn’t grow very fast.

The rain was unrelenting. I’d gotten about as wet as I wanted to be out in the garden, so back to the house. I did some vacuuming, and saw the bread had risen beautifully! Time for baking.

I preheated the oven, got the bread dough in, and set the timer, with a heads up to John. Then I  bundled back up and took a walk—about 40 minutes. On our gravel road, a walk in the rain is a pretty muddy experience, but a nice big umbrella kept my head reasonably dry.

Once I got home, the bread was ready! Out of the oven and onto a rack. I cut up the rhubarb, and with the addition of a quart of frozen marion berries from last summer’s harvest, I made a fruit compote, stirring it now and then as I prepared dinner.

Finally, dinner time! I was more than ready to sit again. We tend to eat really late this time of year, with the extended light in the evenings—not that there was much light this particular evening! But by the time we finished dinner, I was tired.

But it had been a productive day. More productive than most. And now John and I had fruit for breakfast, and a fresh supply of bread! Regarding this recipe, you may note that it’s easy to work in the various stages of sponge, mixing, rising and second rise around all kinds of other activities.

I later heard this rainstorm had been one of those “atmospheric rivers” we’ve been getting this year. The upside of all this moisture is that the garden soil is plenty damp, so the weeds are easier to pull--that is, when it's not too rainy to be outside!