I grow Rhubarb. We've never tried winter forcing. We eat in in the summer with strawberries.

Rhuburb is alive and well in new england, its a sturdy, hardy plant for one, that is hard to kill.

I frankly just eat the stalks , but I know many who love variations of rhubarb with june bearing strawberries with anything (pureed into a sauce, slightly frozen, poured over vanilla bean ice cream) , pies, tarts ect..

When my grand kids, grand kids are alive, the same patches of rhubarb will still be kicking around.

You can even buy it as a seasonal treat in the early summer in the markets..

This however, has given me much depression, with yet another 12 inches of snow on the way, I am very far behind you in my seasons... bloody limeys, thanks for the cheering up =P.

Rhubarb pie is the way my family eats it and I love it. Humungous patches of it were at my grandmother's ranch in Mendocino County. It grows okay at my mother's place in Santa Rosa, but I haven't found a spot that satisfies it here (too hot, too dry, not enough winter chill, not the right soil? I've tried a few times...). I always associate rhubarb with Easter -- that's about when it's first ready here (no forcing).

In Persian cooking there's a sauce made with beef and rhubarb (equal parts of each), seasoned lots of parsley plus cinnamon, and nutmeg. I tried it once, way back when, but I remember, being without sugar, it was excruciatingly tart.

Does anyone but me eat parsnips anymore? It seems like there are always only a token few in the vegetable section of the market, often shriveled with age. We used to grow those on the family ranch, too, but not something that's going to do well here. How about in the UK?

~ Debbie

Love rhubarb pie but have never grown it. I miss my grandmothers rhubarb pies. Her mince meat pies too were always my favorite for the holidays. Can't even find that anymore.

Rhubarb grows outdoors in gardens here - my Mother grew it, and fed it to us as a vegetable - we hated it! Years later I had a rhubarb & strawberry tart, which was of course delightful, and gave me a new look on rhubarb - it just needs lots of sugar! It shows up in our super market in the Summer.

Other vegs - you are right about foodies - every town in our county has a "farmer's market" at least once a week, and you can get all sorts of locally grown vegetables. I like the tiny brussel sprouts still on their long stems. What about lima beans? Here we think artichokes are a staple, but I believe they were once rare in many places.

In the US South they eat all sorts of interesting vegetables - okra (aka gumbo) for example.

Jackie

my rhubarb is a bunch of steamed dandelion leaves with virgin olive oil, fresh lemon juice, and a dash of coarse salt. mmm....
Swiss rainbow chard cooked the same way is almost as good.

Our Rhubarb is doing great! Here in SoCal

I love rhubarb and my mom grows it. It gives enough for both of us. Pie and crisp are the best- and preserves!

When I was young my dad used to grow a funny little lantern type vine that had yellow cherry tomatoe shaped fruits that were sweet and unusual. He called them Yellow Husks. They look like tomatillos but are sweet. I wish I could find them again. I think he took cuttings or , well I don't know.
My dad could grow anything. He could throw seeds at a rock pit and it would grow a garden, so maybe he kept seeds.
His parents had a huge garden which they would give us tons of fruit from each year (plums, rasperries strawberries, cherries, apples and pears). They made the BEST cider.
There is a new apple-- Honey Crisp- which reminds me very much of the apples my grandparents grew, but I am not sure it would survive in zone 4. Their property was sold 25 years ago but I wonder about going back (very small town) and seeing if the orchard is there. It'd be cool to have these heirlooms plants.

Lola could they have been "ground cherries"?

Here is a link that might be useful: Rareseeds

lola-lemon, the "yellow husks" sound like ground cherries -- my Mom had those, too, for many years (they are eager-beaver "volunteers" from seed, to say the least -- all over the garden, every year). The seed seems to be available from a lot of heirloom seed vendors, Territorial Seed, etc.

Lola

Honey Crisp apples are the "in" apple right now, I do not have enough chill hours, I think they are for more northern gardens.

check out the info at the U of Minn.

Here is a link that might be useful: Honey Crisp Apple

Thank you! Yes That is it! I looked for them for years, and never found them and I just looked now and you can find them in several places. Clearly Heirloom and organic gardening has reached far and wide.
I am glad to hear they are easy to grow from seed- (sounds like you can throw them in a rock pit as they like poor soil) as I am not the best seed starter.

Kippy, yes,the Honey Crisp is a new hybrid and it is delicious. You guys showing me these things are now available made me go looking this stuff up and it turns out the Honey Crisp was created in Minnnesota (cold!) and was tested recently and they don't really know what it's parent's are. so It' is possible it is related to my Grandparents Apple- which would have been planted probably in the 30s. But not sure.

woot!

This post was edited by lola-lemon on Sun, Mar 17, 13 at 22:54

Dad said his mom used to grow Rhubarb surrounded by hay in rich composty soil when they lived on the East Coast and him and his brother would go out and dip the stalks in a jar of sugar and eat it that way. I heard that it likes cool moist locations sort of like raspberries and blackberries. I don't know if rhubarb likes dry So. CA but I can grow potted blueberries and strawberries are king here so that's what I have now.

There are these differences in produce. Once at my greengrocer's I stumbled across some apples...they were big red and green ones, lousy for eating raw because of their mushy texture, but the juice just ran out of them, and they had a peculiarly rich flavor. Of course I turned them into pie, the best I ever made. I've never found them since.
Fortunately produce is generally satisfactory in Italy. About parsnips, I've never seen the pale ones, but once I experimented with scorzanera--black parsnip--in soup, and it was delicious. I asked for it again this year but my greengrocers weren't able to get it.
I am a bit envious of all you folks with vegetable gardens: it's not feasible for us. I'm edging toward fruit, though.

Rhubarb cooked with ginger and onion makes an excellent sauce for roast pork or duck. And speaking of okra and grits: YUM!

yes, yes, Melissa, try fruit. How can you not, being rosaceae (mostly). There is always a little space for blackcurrants. MY allotment has always edged the veggies out in favour of fruit :(sweet tooth....although not mine anymore - obvs)
Interesting how rhubarb is a summer fruit (veg) in the US. By June, mine is too big and gnarly...and anyway, there are sweeter, yummier fruits around. Rhubarb is always notable for being ready at this time of year (I grow an early variety).
Oh Silverkelt - spring has not reached us either (which makes eating my own produce so piquant - the custard is basically a winter goody because it is FOUL out there - cold, cold, cold and nothing better till mid April (according to the met office).
Okra (shudder) - have attempted these many times (under pressure from veg loving daughter) - we usually manage a handful of slimy things (I stand over her and make her eat them too) - the flowers are nice tho.
Hey Lola, we call ground cherries, 'cape gooseberries' - related to physalis (Chinese lanterns) and yep, easy to grow.
Mostly, it is good to see that rhubarb is still being grown and eaten - I doubt many teenagers would have it on their menu, here in the UK but older folk always look forward to the first rhubarb (and if we don't grow it personally, we can usually get it from the (rhubarb triangle) in Yorkshire, where it is still grown in massive forcing sheds with candlelight for the pickers. For those who do have it, it really is worth trying the forcing method, even just covering a portion of the crown will give the tenderest, sweetest pink stalks....which keep that delicate pink (unlike the cooked greeny colour, later in the year)
It is surprisingly good as a tart sauce with mackerel too.

Ooh Suzy! Rhubarb and custard! Oh if there is one thing I miss about England it's that. And raspberries! And gooseberries!
You can tell how much by the exclamation marks.
I can't really complain. In my little garden I have pomegranates, golden gages, black plums, loquats, oranges and apricots.
The apricots make a good crumble too.
The tree is in full blossom now. So are the plums and gages.
The air is filled with the sound of bees working the blossoms.
Every year at this time, when I am in the garden, the sound of the bees remind me of The Lake Isle Of Innisfree by W.B. Yeats.

I will arise now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand by the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Daisy

Camp, I'm a southern girl and I don't like okra by itself unless it's sliced and rolled in cornmeal and fried. But I love it sliced in soups and gumbos (think shrimp) and whole in peas (think black-eyed, conch, zipper, etc) over rice. The only way I've had rhubarb was in a strawberry rhubarb pie, and it was yummy. I think I must see if the ground cherries will grow here.

I had rhubarb yesterday, from the freezer. One of my grandsons visited yesterday and he loves rhubarb so I made a compote with it (we use the French word for stewed fruit in Sweden). It's a family yoke because when he was little he called it compost. The plant is covered in snow though, quite invisible, and not likely to show up for several months.

Love, love, love rhubarb. I pick a ton in early summer and freeze it to make rhubarb pies and crisp through the winter. I always save enough to make a rhubarb pie on Easter. I've had a lot of folks turn up their nose at rhubarb pie and then do a complete turnaround when forced to try a forkful of mine (actually my MIL's recipe; the secret is honey.) And I find if you keep the rhubarb from flowering, you can continue to harvest it through the summer as long as it is well watered.
So how does that work, Campanula - you pick the tender young shoots that have been kept in the dark - and you eat the baby leaves, too???? (I always thought they were poisonous!) Then do you let it go on to re-sprout and grow under normal sunlight the rest of the season?

Mmmm, Swiss chard. I planted seeds a couple weeks back & am now transplanting babies into the rose beds. Pretty plant, too.

Also ready for turnip greens in a few weeks. We'll thin the turnips by eating them for greens then harvest the roots later.

My dad separated strawberry runners last fall & kept them sheltered so we're enjoying a few berries now.

The big haul starts in May when the blackberries & peaches start. Yummm

Another great heirloom seed source is J.L. Hudson. Extraordinary selection from seed savers all over the world. Their old type chickpeas & blackeyed peas did great last hot dry summer. And they have some very old dianthus & sweet peas.

Kippy,
Applenut on the fruit & orchards forum says you can grow any kind of apple you like chill hours or not as long as you have the correct pollinator. The key seems to be training and stripping the leaves off at the right time. He said apples in warm areas want to grow vertical limbs ( not so good for making apples ). The advice is to espalier them or tether the branches down so they angle out and don't grow straight up and down. There are other hints too that you can look into with some searching on that forum. This is exciting stuff. I have a lazy Fuji that I am starting over with. Last month I cut off all the upright stuff and it's already sending out new buds to grow replacement branches which I will train for better fruiting.

Kitty, thanks for the info. I must have missed that post. I read that forum, but find much has little relation to living in SoCal (same with the citrus forum just because my trees go in the ground and not in pots) I have 4 newer apples I want to espalier.

Mariannese, would you happen to know the name of a certain bush berry-my grandmother grew them in her little garden on Bornholm. She had goose berries and "stickle (sp)" baer. If I remember right they were pink/red with little prickles on them. I planted a gooseberry-no idea if it will ever amount to anything but I had to try. Mom wants a crab apple like the one they had on the old farm also on Bornholm, I think I found one close to hers at a nursery up the hwy a couple of hours. Just to figure out that berry plant....

Kitty, I did some checking and did not find any info on stripping leaves to replace chill hours. Or that how you stretch the limbs replacing chill hours. I can see how the leaf striping might push some early dormancy or the limb stretching change the way the sap runs in the tree.

I did read that some people do have good luck with trees not meant for their zone, just might not have the yields or quality of other locations.

Kind of like growing grapefruit at the coast, yes you can grow them....but do you really want to eat them? Or do you have enough sugar to make them sweet? Or do you just get used to the flavor (bitter with out enough hot weather here)

Kittymoonbeam,

It must be a New England thing. My Dad who came from New England taught us to dip rhubarb stalks in the sugar bowl - not my mother's favorite thing. Strawberry rhubarb pie is great and so is straight rhubarb pie and we used to eat it as a sauce like apple sauce. But I think my favorite was three layers of strawberry rhubarb sherbet placed between four layers of angel food cake and frosted with whipping cream - my "Birthday cake" for a few years. Of course it had to be frozen if made ahead and then left to sit awhile so it could be cut and served.

I have not been able to grow rhubarb here...yet.

Cath

Kippy, stikkelsbaer is gooseberry, but your grandmother must have had a red variety. It is superior to the yellow and green sorts, at least the most common red over here, the Finnish Hinnonmaeki, and I've dug out my yellow fruiting plants. The colour of the jam is so much better, too.

I misspelled "joke" in my last post.

Rhubarb is very popular here for pie and sauces. It is definitely more of a spring/early summer plant, coincides with the first big strawberry harvests/local strawberries of which people pair them together. Devilish to grow I think, it spreads if goes to seed right?

No, but it comes back almost forever. At my old home, there were several old homestead sites of settlers from the post-civil war era. The sign of these is now nothing more than a depression in the ground where the house stood once upon a time, usually some ancient apple trees and overgrown lilac - and if you search carefully, almost always some rhubarb. The rhubarb is still coming up, spring after spring, even choked out as it is with the field grasses. But spread? No.

well, we are 'told' that the crowns shouls be divided and even replaced every few years....and, when the rhubarb is forced, that crown cannot be forced again, it is usually discarded. My crown is over 30 years old and is more then 4feet wide so I put a cover over a portion of the crown and pick the first pale pink shoots (we don't eat the leaves as they contain oxalic acid, a poison - but the victorians used to make insecticides from the stewed leaves). After picking, we leave the cover off and the plant keeps growing but the leaves get huge and the stems get much thicker and coarser. The following year, I will put a cover on a different section of the crown.
I do remove the flowers (although they wouldn't really seem to seed and spread) but by May, the first strawbs are coming in, then the early gooseberries (we have the red Hinnomaeki too, Mariannese, along with a couple of very old cooking varieties), then the redcurrants, blackcurrants, first raspberries. Cherries in July (then again in September), nectarines and peaches, finally, blackberries, plums and apples and nuts (I don't have pears -yet and blueberries are still young). Last year, my grand-daughter was picking fruit straight into her mouth and my elderly collie will also help herself to raspberries off the canes. I am waiting for the first blossom of the year (almond, then peaches) as this, along with tulips, supplies a floral extravaganza until the roses and sweet peas come on song. By July, I barely see the plot since I spend months on my kneeler, picking berries, hardly raising my head over the canopy (and sweltering in the kitchen doing evening jamming). Every year, I swear it will be my last.....and then every spring, all those bad thoughts vapourise with the first pink blossoms. By mid May, the entire plot is a mass of blossom and rampant cow parsley, a sort of sherbert-y frothing sea of petals - will have my camera on hand to record it for the first time ever.

My father said that the rhubarb needed to have the flowering stem cut off otherwise it would take nutrients from the plant (that should go into the stems). Rhubarb grew very well in Illinois.

Cath

Thanks Mariannese, I ordered one of those gooseberries to go with my green one.

I just looked up this Hinnonmaki Gooseberry and it apparently grows in partial *shade* to full sun. I think I will give it a shot!
This is a great thread-- I can't wait to let my child try the different Gooseberries this summer.

Someone commented on root vegetables. As a kid we got a lot of those from the garden (beets, turnip/ rutabaga and parsnips, carrots). I hated them and thought, except for carrots, they tasted like soap (parsnips) or dirt (beets) etc. I really like them now and my husband still hates them-- and I think, perhaps, that what you have to eat as a child you are better able to appreciate older.

An Italian dish I often crave is a ragu of roasted veges (parsnips, carrots, turnips, aubergine, zucchini etc.) over polenta. So good.

This IS a great thread. We always had warm rhubarb pie with ice cream in the late spring. I didn't care for it so much as a child but love the tart taste now. I was always intrigued by gooseberries and currants myself. And wouldn't you know it, when I was old enough to have a garden of my own, my garden was in state where it is illegal to grow them. But I do grow the tiny white wonderberries (strawberries). And it's true that they taste like tropical fruit.

Such a beautiful poem, Daisy.
And live alone in a bee loud glade.
:)

Our garden had many old gooseberry bushes when we moved in 18 years ago, all very sick with the American gooseberry mould Sphaerotheca mors-uvae but the taste was far superior to anything we can get here now, even from the famous and healthy Hinnonmaki. We had to remove all the old bushes. Campanula, can you recommend a good old English variety of gooseberries? I dream of having a bush with the old taste. Health would of course be nice too.

My Hinnonmaki gooseberries grow in fairly deep shade.

Campanula...thank you.
I had forgotten how much I love and miss rhubarb. So Sunday, on way back from church did a side trip to Hunter Farms and purchased a few slips. Also purchased a few slips of horseradish.
Maybe next year I will be able to harvest a bit to make a crumble..
Jeannie
Having a light peaceful rain today which should help them settle in real well.

yep, I have had a problem with mildew too, especially on Careless and Leveller. However, Rokula is a good red, as is Lancashire Lad but am trying greenfinch this year and also a cultivar called Black velvet which is a cross between a goosgog and a worcesterberry. Have heard good things about Martlett and another red, Pax. Golden drop is one of the ones I lost too (a lovely variety).
Ha, Jeannie, hope you have acreage for the horseradish - it is a spreader.
Gooseberry and elderflower fool - yum!