Finally a good use for it

Apparently, slugs do not like rhubarb any more than I do.

In fact, they seem to like it even less.

This seems odd, given that the undersides of the rhubarb leaves often shelter a goodly collection of snails, and snails are just slugs with shells, aren't they?

Ok, not quite.

So JP was putzing around online, as he often does, looking for ways to keep our garden 'bio' without sacrificing all the goodies we want to eat to the wildlife that also wants to eat them. We already gave in to anti-doryphore product, after all, and it's a slippery slope.

The site said you could take a kilo of rhubarb, let it macerate for 3 days in a couple gallons of water, and then spray the stuff on the garden each day for three days.

Alright, I can do that.

I cut up an unweighed bunch of rhubarb, and let it soak in a casserole. After 3 days at room temp, there were all sorts of fungal colonies floating around, and the rhubarb-associated bacteria were going strong. I wonder what part is it of the plant that slugs don't like. Perhaps I should boil it first and then let it sit the 3 days. But what if it's the culture of one of the fungi that's the active part, and being too clean would ruin everything...

Well, whatever. I bottled up some and sprayed the garden with it on Wednesday evening. I only saw one slug at the time (they tend to be out a lot more in the morning, as you might imagine), so I doused it. 

It did not seem to appreciate this.

At all.

Then last night I went around again, with an even funkier spray bottle of rhubarb soup. This time I did not see any slugs at all. As I said, however, the evening is not the best slug-observation period. So I will pay attention tomorrow morning whether or not there are the usual number of slugs on the salad and in the potatos.

Return of the beast

 it might look like a patch of dirt

 but I know better

the rhubarb is back

Whacking back the beast

Less than 2 months since the buds became visible in the dirt, with all the other plants in the garden just getting started, the monster is already set for its first trim.

 Go for it, Laars.

A pie-worth of stalks later, and I've meerly thinned it out enough to see two additional flower stalks about  burst onto the scene.

It's baaaaack.....

Yeah, it looks rather like a bit of dirt.

This was my rhubarb patch on the 24th of March. The little rhubarb sprouts are just barely starting, but you can see them scattered about.

 On April 1st there were recognizable leaves.

Rhubarb is cute!

 On the 11th the leaves were bigger, and not all wrinkly. 

It isn't monstrous yet, but that's a lot of growth for just 10 days.

A week later, on the 18th, I had to start putting a rat in for scale. Should have had one all along.

It's got leaves the size of dinnerplates already. End of May it'll have leaves the size of my dinner table, and I will hack at it with a knife and distribute its body parts to appreciative friends.

Rhubarb blues

Oh no! A big wind came up and knocked over one of the Mother Ship's antennae!

Thank goodness it has a backup (to the left, rising up out of the frame).

AAAAaaaaaa

It's unfurling its infernal antenna!

Soon the seeds will be everywhere

They will land and sprout

and all will become rhubarb.

Run!!!!!

(this is not my real poem. just a test to make sure the Linky thingy works)

Big enough

I missed posting an update of the rhubarb last week, but it's so large that incremental changes are hard to appreciate now. What's new is I can't include my shoe for scale without taking it off and stepping back!

The monster has reached the point of starting work on an antenna. Perhaps it isn't the mother ship after all, but is about to contact its even more gigantic brethren for a full-scale invasion of Earth.

 

So naturally, I took a knife to it and chopped a dozen stalks for pie.

Still growing

Remember this monster from last week?

Well, a new picture from the same angle (blogger, if you're going to turn one of the shots sideways, at least do the other one too. It's the very same thing, after all.). It's hard to say that it's bigger, though it is. Seriously bigger. It's just going up now. Past my knees. And you can see the individual leaves have gone from dinner-plate size to dinner-plate in a really puffed-up restaurant size. Next week you could put my largest cat on one of them and she wouldn't spill over.

The monster

Ten days ago, this is what the rhubarb looked like. Definitely coming back from its winter siesta, but quite a modest plant.

Just 10 days later, this is what it was up to last night (shoe for scale). And that was minus a good-sized chunk I gave to a friend. It's ba a a a ack!