The Frosts Survivor

My rhubarb is doing really well. It's been growing away quietly under a large plastic tub. I keep having a peek at it to see how its growing. It survived the snows and bad frosts of last week and I'm hoping to pull some for a dessert this weekend. Not too sure yet what sort of dessert, not the usual rhubarb crumble though, but probably poaching the stalks in a ginger sauce. I've had it in my garden for three years now and I hope this spring I'll have enough to make some rhubarb and ginger jam.

It think these red stalks and lime green leaves just unfurling really so look stunning. Almost too good to eat. We always had rhubarb pies and tarts as a kid but it fell out of favour with the 60's generation. Now it enjoying a revival and most comes from an area of Yorkshire known as the Rhubarb Triangle where it's forced in pitch black sheds and harvested in candlelight.

A Resurgence of the Rhubarb.

In its heyday the area known as the "rhubarb triangle", between Leeds, Wakefield and Bradford, boasted about 200 farmers and was recognised as the world's centre for growing the fruit. Grown in pitch-black sheds and harvested by hand in candlelight, rhubarb grown indoors is generally considered to be sweeter in taste than its outdoor variety.
The forcing process was discovered by chance in the early 19th Century, but it was Yorkshire which became the first place in the world to build special sheds to grow it in 1877.
Popularity grew over the years and hundreds of tons of rhubarb were regularly taken on the "rhubarb express" train to markets in London. During World War II, the government curbed the price of the fruit to make it more affordable to the masses when you could buy a pound of rhubarb for just a shilling. (5p) Huge amounts were grown to feed the troops and everybody grew rhubarb in their garden.

Now there are just 12 rhubarb farmers left in the Yorkshire triangle but they are enjoying a revival of the fruits popularity

The peach tree has now emerged from under the fleece covering protecting it from the frosts. I'm hoping for some warm weather soon to encourage the bees to fertilise the flowers or I'll have to go around it with a paint brush! I really hope I get a crop of peaches this year.

I'm amazed the marsh marigold in the pond is flowering as profusely as it is . It's been encased in ice several times over the past few Weeks as the temperature dropped several degrees below freezing causing the water to ice over.

No sign of the frogs yet! I hope the grass snake that has been slithering and swimming around in the pond over the last few years hasn't scared them off completely. It's not been good for frog spawn in the last two years as they have arrived early and spawned but then a late severe frost has devastated the spawn and hatched tadpoles.