Peasgood

I think the Yorkshire men would have you believe that but we shipped thousands of sets all over the country. A lot was grown in the Evesham area and an increasing amount in East Anglia too. There are two sorts of rhubarb sold, one is the very pink stuff which is "forced" in dark sheds and the other is called garden rhubarb, just means grown outside. There is probably more garden than forced.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/653fce9846532b000d67f57a/hort-dataset-08june23i.xlsx

UK rhubarb figures 2022 510 ha (1260 acres) grown 15,000 tons Worth £22 million Don't know imports figures as not shown, just bulked together under "other"

I doubt there is anything like that amount grown any more. Probably 69,999,000 of those people don't eat rhubarb anyway and wouldn't know what it was or how to use it. Times have changed and when the old biddies died out so did the demand. If you see rhubarb these days it is 3 sticks in a plastic bag, usually only 5 bags on the supermarket shelf and all with yellow stickers on.

I don't know but I expect we are pretty self sufficient on rhubarb. There will be some forced stuff from Holland and most likely outdoor from Poland. Our trade into the jam industry stopped when Polish rhubarb undercut us to the point it wasn't viable, from memory we were getting £120/ton and that was only just worth doing.

We (me and my family) used to grow possibly up to 50 acres of rhubarb. We would send 3 wagon loads a day into Liverpool and Manchester wholesale markets. All handballed in 18lb boxes and all after a full day of picking the stuff. That family in Yorkshire famous for rhubarb, they used to buy wagon loads off us. We sent artic loads of it off to jam factories, they mixed it into the more expensive jams to bulk out the raspberries etc. We also sent artic loads of plants to Yorkshire and the rest of the country. Back in the day a lot of prisons had farms that fed the prisoners, they bought lots of rhubarb sets off us and most seasons involved a delivery to one HMP or other. I think I worked out that we as a family partnership were producing 12% of the UK crop. As trends changed and sales went to supermarkets rather than wholesale into greengrocers numbers dwindled to the point where one van load a week was enough. We stopped farming and nobody seemed to notice much but I hear you can't get rhubarb now because it is too expensive.

Lots of recipes for rhubarb and mackerel. Not for me though.

Everything feels very late here and only just warm enough these last few days. Tried to work my garden yesterday but it is still a very wet pudding. Got some garlic in that is doing ok. Last year I bought a load off ebay and grew it on, something like 100 sets or more. Was disappointed with the harvest but it has kept us in garlic until even now so was pretty good in reality. Rhubarb has done very well, an abundance of that and lots of people commenting how it is expensive to buy. Should start selling it. Have a lot of tomatoes but little more than seedlings yet, I did buy a few plants yesterday to try and advance that crop. Got some greyhound cabbage ready to be planted out, some sprouts too. Had late planted kale and broccoli in my polytunnel which cropped well and was very nice. The kale was especially nice and the best I have ever had, not that bitter leathery stuff you can get on an outdoor plant. Last years onions have just about come to an end, this years are not even planted out yet. I started a lot in plug trays but too wet to plant yet and they are maybe 9" tall now. I am expecting them to bolt. Got some more yesterday in the bargain box at B&Q so will give them a go. Also got a very poor asparagus plant that I will try to rescue. I do have salad leaves in the tunnel that I am picking, they are growing quicker than we are eating them and are good as no flea beetle seen yet. I'm sure they will be here soon enough. Cucumbers are up, courgettes are up, pumpkins about to be sown. I will sow 250 pumpkin and sell to local greengrocer. They don't make me a fortune but fun to grow and the grandkids delight in them.

It is a balance of pruning, fertilising and thinning of the fruit. Important to pick the fruit when ripe too, don't let them just fall off. If it is over set this year then pick off the extra fruitlets later this month and leave them spaced out enough for them to grow to the best size, so 1 fruit every 4" for example. You can do this when they are about the size of a grape. (you can do it whenever you like but the earlier the better but big enough to be sure they have set and not going to fall off with June drop. It also looks to have very little growth, a bit more pruned off in winter would encourage growth although it does look to be a dwarfing rootstock so not easy. I have been doing this professionally all my life and still not there 100%.

When I was a kid we were actively encouraged to have knives and guns, a lot different than today. Was given my first air rifle when aged 10 and my first shotgun aged 11. They were my guns and I was free to go off shooting unsupervised whenever I wanted. Can't say the shotgun got a great deal of use as we couldn't afford the shells, obviously. Even the air rifle pellets were limited and were bought in little paper type boxes of a couple of hundred. We would go picking strawberries or something in the summer, earn a few shillings and then wander off to the local shops and buy a penknife. Probably 6-7 years old at the time and nobody batted an eyelid. Nobody got stabbed or shot either, well not seriously anyway.

I've had apple orchards all my life and have never seen a rat damaged apple tree. Once had a colony of rats in one of the orchards, much to my surprise, but no damage. As said, voles are most likely and especially on young trees.Also as said, keeping the vegetation away from the base of the trunk cures that but not with a strimmer. Rabbits and hares will make a real mess of your trees, I have acres of orchards and every tree has a wire netting guard on the trunk to protect against rabbits.

I think the fella that came up with the idea in the first place is now very much against them. It's the sort of thing you might expect a non driver to come up with, hard shoulders are very scary places but infinitely more scary if there isn't one.

I doubt you would but I would think you'd be constantly thinking about it. My Ex's grandfather was a captain in the navy protecting the Atlantic convoy, it sounded pretty grim. If a ship went down you had to keep going and just watch the survivors float by knowing they hadn't a chance. I would think those images would be in your head forever more.

Scared to death of what might happen now it is at the bottom of the sea. Imagine being a sailor on a ship with such a cargo in the Atlantic with U-boats prowling. A different breed.

Fiskars X27 is the one that folk always recommend. Felling axes aren't much good at splitting even compared to a B&Q maul. Oxdale splitters are very much worth their money if going on a tractor. Personally I would never go back to an axe or maul having used an Oxdale but if funds are too tight then I guess you have to.

Nearly every professional apple grower I have ever asked what their favourite tasting apple was has said Spartan. I accept it may not be everyone's favourite but I am surprised to hear you don't like the taste. A fully ripe Spartan fresh off the tree is unbeatable for flavour in my opinion. They don't taste as nice after being stored though. As for storage qualities, I would class them as OK but not brilliant, for juice I struggle with them. They go soft too quick which makes them difficult to squash and no matter when you squash them they do not yield very well. Having said that, this season I pressed some in late January which had been picked October and stored in an opensided barn. They were surprisingly good quality, hardly any rots and yielded reasonably well too.

You would struggle to get uncontrolled regrowth on an m9 no matter what you did to it. If you are thinking of planting a few different varieties pick ones with a range of ripening dates. Something like Discovery for early fruit, Spartan maincrop and then maybe Melrose as a much later variety.

I season 3 years + as a stem, then split in summer and burn in winter after a bit more seasoning. Works well for me and they do usually need that extra seasoning once split, not so much if there has been a long dry spell like we used to get in the olden days.

Surely you know what a bell sounds like though?

I am going to try and be kind but have to say you shouldn't prune them first and then ask how to prune them. First rule is don't cut branches in half like that, either leave it alone or cut it off completely. They would have been better left alone. The two lower branches growing horizontally should be cut right off. Leave the rest to see what happens this year but you have cut the branches you wanted to grow into a nice shaped tree in half. They were your framework. Top tip with Bramley is to let them grow, the weight of fruit brings down branches like you would never think possible.

Are you sure you don't mean 2000 grit? 200 is going to make a mess of it.

The purpose of the pleacher (the laid bit) is to form a living stockproof barrier that feeds the stool while the new growth gets going. Most regrowth should come from the stool, 70-80%. The pleacher will eventually die off as the strong growth from the stool crowds it out, that strong growth will also naturally thin itself. In 20-30 years it is then ready to lay again. If you don't cut the pleachers low, the next time you come to do it the growth you want as your new pleacher will be too high. In your pic they should have been cut a bit lower and the gaps planted up. It looks to me that the horse(s) have been allowed to eat off some of the new growth from the stools which is not a good thing.

Cuts are a bit high and should have kept the horses away from it better. No expert mind.

I have always felt the above to be true and the major thing that makes it be so in my mind is the sawbench blade stays in the same place. It can only hurt you if you put your hand in there. Watch: Man's miraculous near-miss from runaway saw blade WWW.BBC.CO.UK Seconds after entering a shop in the US, the blade from a nearby construction site becomes lodged in the door.

From experience they will probably survive but never thrive.