Living inside a triangle!

Although the area defined as the Rhubarb Triangle is subject to various interpretations Wakefield is a constant so it is hardly surprising that we grow quite a lot of rhubarb on our plot. Reading up on how you should cultivate rhubarb you would think that on a heavy clay soil and given little attention that our rhubarb shouldn't flourish but it does. 

When we took on our plot, in the grass path along one edge, a clump of rhubarb persisted in growing in spite of numerous attempts to dig it up - in fact some of our clumps are descendants of this unknown variety having been hacked from the main clump as we tried to dissuade it from growing again and again. Eventually we won the battle but for a year or two the rhubarb gave us a good fight!

I've noticed on different blogs people have been comparing how far into growth their rhubarb is but there are so many different varieties of rhubarb some are early into growth and others later so it's hardly surprising that some people will have rhubarb ready for picking earlier than others.

Our earliest variety is Timperley Early - its a variety often used for forcing although we've never forced ours. Maybe it's a childhood thing (I can't remember a time when I didn't have fresh rhubarb to eat from a garden or use its leaves as a makeshift umbrella) but we quite like our rhubarb grown naturally.

Soon we'll be harvesting sticks from Timperley Early.

Then we have a couple of roots of Champagne rhubarb - this isn't as advanced as Timperley but is another fairly early variety. At the moment some leaf buds have just burst open.

Another of our varieties is Giant Crimson Grooveless. Strangely taking into consideration its name this variety doesn't grow as large and has very red stems. No leaves on this one yet but plenty of bright red leaf buds.

The last of our identifiable varieties is Raspberry - its strange how rhubarb steals the name of fruits as there is a variety called Strawberry and another called Early Cherry and another called Irish Apple. Maybe it's trying to make up for the fact that technically rhubarb isn't a fruit at all!

One of the Raspberry rhubarb clumps is causing concern as it looks dead but the leaf buds of the other are just starting to burst.

Then we have a few nameless clumps. At least one may be Victoria as I seem to remember us growing some of those from seed ages ago. These are at different stages of growth and many are swaddled in weeds but it's quite difficult to remove weeds that decide to grow wedged in the clumps and the rhubarb doesn't seem to mind!

If you want to read more about the Rhubarb Triangle I have a page on my website here

As you can see from the date Blogger decided to over-rule me and publish this post early than I scheduled it for! I was going to remove it but Tanya got to it before I did and I didn't want to delete her comment. Just wanted to say it's not Tuesday you haven't missed a couple of days but you may have missed the post that I did publish today about the frogs  which is here