42itous: (Default)
42itous ([personal profile] 42itous) wrote2012-05-09 12:43 am
Entry tags:

(no subject)

Is rhubarb supposed to flower? Can I eat the stalk that the flower is growing on?
it looks a little like conical cauliflower

[identity profile] 42itous.livejournal.com 2012-05-09 04:50 am (UTC)(link)
I found my own answers.
http://33barefootlane.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/edible-rhubarb-flower-heads/
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/ext/rhubarbflowers.html
ext_174465: (Default)

[identity profile] perspicuity.livejournal.com 2012-05-09 04:51 am (UTC)(link)
i hope it flowers, else, how can it have sex?

as for eating it? the ancient memory of my father's and mother's comes up blank.

though there's still time to find tender shoot of japanese knotweed. that's worth eating :) lemony rhubarb taste.

#

[identity profile] 42itous.livejournal.com 2012-05-09 05:05 am (UTC)(link)
I'd forgotten about knotweed -- someone told me last year that it was edible, but it was already too late in the season. I'll see if I can find some tomorrow, maybe along the bikeway.
ext_174465: (Default)

[identity profile] perspicuity.livejournal.com 2012-05-09 05:10 am (UTC)(link)
at the edges, there should still be short pieces, not much more than 9 inches long or so, and ideally not too fat - pencil thick to finger thick...

remove leaves, scrub a bit on the outsides to loosen ... stuff and skin. i just toss into some water and nuke, split in half, and eat the inside mush.

if the plant walls are super thin, and still tender, viola, but usually i'm finding a bit late into it, they're a little fibrous, but the insides are still yum.

young plantains abound, and i'm told the lamb's quarters are doing nicely. danelions should be nice now too.

might be a nice time to take a the first centimeter or so of fresh pine needles and make warm tea with (vitamin C).

time to browse the verge :)

#

[identity profile] 42itous.livejournal.com 2012-05-09 05:25 am (UTC)(link)
Wow. Those both (plantains and lambs' quarters) look like things I regularly weed out of my garden, and I definitely just uprooted a lot of dandelions yesterday. My lambs' quarters have purple/pink spots -- I wonder if that's a blight of some sort.
blk: (house)

[personal profile] blk 2012-05-09 02:21 pm (UTC)(link)
And soon there will mounds of purslaine, which is a pretty yummy weed. I think I noticed a few strands of it in my garden yesterday.

[identity profile] anotherjen.livejournal.com 2012-05-09 04:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Huh! Our rhubarb has never flowered. And not just because we eat it all before it has a chance to, either.

[identity profile] 42itous.livejournal.com 2012-05-09 09:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Apparently rhubarb is more likely to flower the older it gets -- which doesn't make sense, in my case, because I just planted it last year. And the thing to do is to cut off the flower stalk as soon as you notice it (it's easy to recognize if you know what you're looking for: it's a large bulbous central stalk that doesn't look like a leaf), so the plant doesn't put all its energy into making the flowers. Oops. Oh well, no harm done, and now I know for next year.