Posts Tagged ‘rhubarb’

The first salad of the year: 23rd May(!)

For lunch yesterday I had the following:

A couple of slices of Yorkshire ham
A chunk of Stilton
A dollop of mayonnaise
Some chilli chutney
A pear
Some mixed salad leaves.

It was extremely tasty – the salad leaves were from the garden and were beautifully crisp alongside the ham and cheese. What’s strange is that this was the first batch of salad leaves I’ve actually picked this year. Normally by late May I’d have been chomping on rocket, chives, pea shoots etc. for about a month or so. But the weather has been so cold that – like everything else – the salad side of things is very much delayed.

Also picked the first batch of rhubarb today. There should be enough for several crumbles this year, as our rhubarb patch is finally getting established. As for the strawberries, they are coming along but still no ripe fruit. Maybe the first week in June?

Rhubarb shoots

The temperatures may have gone down to winter levels, but there are signs of spring in several places, including our rhubarb patch (see below). It’s in a corner of a shady raised bed which contains comfrey and Jerusalem artichokes as its edible components (not much other than that, apart from some elephant-eared saxifrage and a lot of snails). The plastic-coated chicken wire is to stop our cats from using the rhubarb patch as a toilet, and will stay in place until the rhubarb gets more established, using bricks/stones to adjust its height above the soil!