I realize being a rhubarb snob is hardly the same as being a Darjeeling tea snob, but here am I, a rhubarb snob.
I was extremely rhubarb poor when I was a child, and that suited me just fine, as I hated that sour stuff. I can still remember going over to my Grampas and his pulling Grandma Sanders rhubarb by the grocery sack full.
(Note Grandma Sanders was not even a relative, but where I grew up, it seemed some people just had names like that, and they were every one's grandparents.
My Grandpa for instance was my Grandpa and he seemed to be a number of my cousins on my Mom' side Grandpa too............it was just easier to call people by the names the close to kin families did.)
Meanwhile back at rhubarb. It really pissed me off.......well I couldn't get pissed off then as Mom would have hit me for thinking in those terms, but I always thought for all the things in life to not have and go begging for, rhubarb had to be about like begging excrement from a toilet.
So that got me going as a nursery person in like Scarlet O'Hara, I was never going to be rhubarb poor again.
My first attempts were from a company now tits up from it's original owners in the Gurneys. They had those one cent sales, so I bought some as 1 cent was a deal I thought..........until the one plant I did grow in a drought my too many fingers dad pulled out the seed stalk and killed the damn thing.........so even rhubarb was a nemesis in keeping me poverty stricken.
I tried some more rhubarb from Gurneys in a sale, which I still have one plant that is pure green..........I mean Obama can't puke vomit that green and Muchelle can't wear that negro green any greener than this suff.........it is just repulsive in looks.
Finally when my Gram who guarded her strawberry rhubarb tighter than her virginity died, Grandpa went to heaven and Uncle joined them, I decide to get some rhubarb from their place before it went to some jerk who would kill the stuff as nobody appreciates rhubarb.
Uncle did fertilizer it once with his tractor and loader......put 3 feet of cow sh*t on it, and damned near killed it, but the red tint of Gram Sanders survived.
So I confiscated Gram's strawberry which when I planted it, grew huge and green.........and some of the red tint, as I actually was starting to like rhubarb as my Sunday school teacher had recipe for pie with cream and eggs in it for a sauce that was really gourmet.
Any way, I got this stuff after much labor to grow and put chicken poop on it, and it grew huge. Got so much and so big, it was a weed really.
Then of course my siblings decided to give me their rhubarb............Valentine rhubarb.
You can not see me snarling and frowning, but just think that way in reading Valentine rhubarb.
Valentine rhubarb should be fed to terrorists and criminals in prison as it has no purpose in this world but to torture people. It is a big clump of thing roots with a watery stem, that just turns rhubarb cake into some slime and ................it just wastes all your time, and yet all I see is that Valentine for sale and that Canada Red which is about as hardy as preemie baby with a chest cold.
That brought me to another Gramma, named Gramma Pollock or some other Polish name who had a cabin by the lake one of my siblings purchased. Gramma Pollock who I never met had rhubarb for some reason growing under her trees and it was gorgeous, deep red, little plants that just made a rhubarb snob lust for it.
So I dug up one plant when the sibs decided lake life was not for them, and brought it home, and all was nice and deep red for a few years, and then I took a sucker and put it by an overhang on a building to make sure it was watered well..........and well it turned into this elephant ear green stuff again.
Rhubarb just loves to impress me. That stuff can be 7 inches tall in other people growing it, and sure enough, I get that stuff and it grows 3 feet with baby elephant ears.....and it always turns green.
I realize it is soil elements, nutrients and water, but sometimes I just want some red rhubarb as it just tastes better to the eye.
Gram Pollocks though is really a sweet rhubarb that I use in a sauce I make that I use for German things like coffee cake to spell my short supply of garden huckleberries.
Gram Sanders rhubarb is beautifully tart and has that tannin in it, that makes your mouth pucker and makes great Sunday school teacher pie. Both of these rhubarbs are so unique that I doubt I could go back to eating other rhubarbs for the simple reason the "taste" is just not the same.
I presume some of these are old Russian immigrant stock as that is where the genus came from, and immigrants planted rhubarb for the vitamin C they produced so they would not get scurvy. My Mom often mentioned eating that stuff raw as a child.........so you know how hungry one can get for vitamin C when deprived of it.
For that reason, in protecting you children, you really should get yourself some rhubarb plants of your very own in this Age of Obama, as being malnourished is not fun in the least as it kills you. Being dependent on California raisins is another thing which will get you poor and dead........so maybe check out your family and friends rhubarb and see what you like.
If they have Valentine..........just mumble something about you read Stan Ann ate Valentine before she fertilized Obama, and you don't want a repeat of that in your family as you love America.
But look for the sucker rhubarb that have little plants next to the mother plant, and with a tile spade and permission.........................Lord have mercy, you can have people who hate rhubarb, have their cats crap on it, they run it over with a truck, pile junk on it, and mow it off, but if you ask for a sucker off one, you would think you just asked for their left ovary sack.
But with tile space you can slice off many times a good root segment from a sucker without disturbing the main plant which is a shovel breaker as old rhubarb have roots on them to China and as big as Obama's ego.
You can do this in late fall or I prefer early spring just as they start to bud. Plant them crown level as you dug them, keep them moderately wet, and they will behave very well and get off to a better start than plants from mail orders.
In two years you will have plants you can use.
I will post a recipe I did this year by my lonesome in I chop this in a food processor, of about 8 cups of rhubarb, and two one pound box of strawberries, with 2 cups of sugar.
Cook this down to a sauce and I just can it hot into wide mouth jars and they seal from the heat.
It really is a very nice sauce in tangy, and sweet, that one can use on ice cream, pie filling or as I do in kuchens and things.
The nice part it is so easy compared to most fillings in you can make several quarts in an hour and it doesn't wear you out.
You start doing this, eating some of the older varieties of rhubarb, and you will become a rhubarb snob in wrinkling your nose when some neophyte earnestly mentions their "valentine" and you just nod and smile like the Indonesian mothers did when Stan Ann bragged to them about that kid who ran like a duck.
agtG
