Rhubarb and Rosie

The rather congested rhubarb crown on Plot 5 really needed some attention. Apart from being old it was also ginormous, taking over the main path and tripping me over numerous times as I made my way to the shed, perhaps it knew I had murderous thoughts of sticking my spade straight through it. I have observed the stems becoming thinner towards the centre over the years, the thin stems all collapsed last summer leaving the entire rhubarb patch looking limp and tired. It was certainly struggling.

Taking advantage of some rare mild and dry days I split the rhubarb during the week and replanted a section elsewhere, well away from the main path. Being an early variety of rhubarb I would have preferred to do this late December to early January but the constant bad weather didn’t make it possible.

Getting my spade through the thick and fibrous crown was tough but I managed using my pointy groundbreaker spade, the new section of crown with lots of strong buds was planted near the compost bins and mulched with well rotted manure. That’s another big job ticked off the list.

You may have spotted a little dog sniffing around the rhubarb, that’s Rosie who I occasionally looked after while my aunt and uncle enjoyed a holiday. Sadly my uncle passed away in September 2022. Since then my aunt has found looking after a young dog challenging on her own due to health and mobility problems so I took Rosie under my wing, she moved in with me late summer last year. Rosie has settled in really well and is great company on the allotment, it’s lovely to share my life with a dog again.

Expect to see plenty of her on the blog!