Stick with tradition
Rhubarb – one of the easiest crops to grow – figures large this coming week in Wakefield where TV cook Rosemary Shrager will be among the top chefs appearing at the Festival of Food, Drink and Rhubarb.
The star of ITV's Taste the Nation will give a cookery demonstration at the Wakefield Council-run event, which returns to the city on February 26 and 27.
Rhubarb is still an intrinsic part of the area, where growers like the Asquith family, who have run the Brandy Carr nursery, at Kirkhamgate, near Wakefield, since 1870, have more than 100 varieties of culinary and ornamental rhubarb – the largest range of varieties in West Yorkshire.
The "Rhubarb Triangle", between Wakefield, Morley and Rothwell, once grew more than 90 per cent of the all forced rhubarb, and although the crop's popularity has waned since the golden days of the Victorians, it is still held in high esteem in this corner of West Yorkshire.
If you want to help keep alive the tradition of rhubarb-growing, buy a crown (mature root) or two and plant them in a sunny, well-dug, manure-rich site, and a year later, you should be pulling fresh, succulent sticks until the end of May, and making pies, crumbles, jams and chutneys. And by forcing – covering the developing shoots with a large bucket or even a securely-fastened black polythene bag, harvesting can be brought forward to as early as February.
And the earlier the crop, the more tender and juicier it should be.
Although it is possible to pick rhubarb well into summer, the sticks produced after the end of May tend to be stringy and tough. Best to stick to a six- or seven-week period of harvesting and then let the plant recover. Never let it flower, however, and never eat the leaves – they are extremely poisonous. Gardeners once used these leaves to produce a formidable insecticide.
Given a yearly dressing of manure, one crown of rhubarb should last 10 years before it needs replacing, although some plants do fall foul of diseases such as crown rot and, occasionally, honey fungus. The only solution to either problem is to dig up the rhubarb and burn it.
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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