Force be with you BRING ON AN EARLY CROP OF RHUBARB
The exercise that will do you the most good is one that makes you feel warm and breathe more heavily than usual.
Digging will help tone your legs, back, arms and shoulders.
Take regular breaks when digging, though, otherwise you’ll exhaust the muscles. And make You will tone floppy arms, build upper body strength and firm up those thighs if you use a wheelbarrow to cart away your rubbish.
Don’t overload it, and try to keep the weight over the wheel.
Raking and collecting moss and thatch from the lawn makes for an ideal aerobics session.
Warm up
With any type of exercise, a good warm-up is vital to prevent strains YOU may be seeing the electric pink stalks of rhubarb in shops and wondering why your own is still sulking underground.
The answer is simple – these delicious, tender stalks have been forced. And, yes, there’s still time to wake yours up.
Rhubarb requires a period of frost in winter in order to produce the best stalks, so forcing can be done from now until the end of February for a crop that will be ready throughout March and April.
Only well-nourished plants that are at least three years old should be forced.
The area around the rhubarb crown should be cleared of weeds and decaying leaves, to prevent the crown rotting when it is covered with a forcing pot.
You can use anything from an upturned and injuries. Weeding is a good way to get your muscles stretching gently, especially in your back and your arms.
But remember to kneel rather than stoop. This will put less strain of your lower back but at the same time stretch your thigh muscles.
When you’ve finished gardening, cool down by taking five minutes to clear up slowly and put tools away.
Then relax in a warm, soothing bath to ease any aches and pains. TO prevent hanging baskets from spinning in the wind, clip the chains together with a clothes peg. bin to a traditional bell-shaped terracotta pot – as long as it will keep out the light.
To speed up the forcing process you can insulate the outside of the pot with straw or, better still, go for the old-fashioned method and smear it with dollops of fresh horse manure for added warmth.
It usually takes about eight weeks for the stems to reach an ideal 20-30cm long.
Vigour Tip
Rhubarb crowns will lose vigour if forced annually, so you might prefer to let them grow at their natural pace.
These will be ready for picking from late April right through until June, after which they should be left alone to recover.
It’s important you pick rhubarb stems cleanly to reduce the risk of rotting. Do this by gently pulling the stalk as near as THOMPSON & Morgan have launched two exclusive mixes of hellebores that can be grown “true to type” from seed. Each consists of six different and uniquely coloured and patterned flowers. The Anemone Flowered Mix has blooms with an exquisite central ruff of small petals, pleated like a ballerina’s tutu. The Double Flowered Mix, with another six petal-packed hellebore varieties. Cost is £14.99 per packet from thompson-morgan.com. possible to the base of the plant and at the same time give it a twist.
The leaves are toxic if eaten but can be added to the compost bin.
Over-cropping will reduce the plant’s vigour, so every three or four years it’s a good idea to dig up and divide the plants to keep them healthy and productive.
The average plant will provide three or four crowns, each with a large bud.
If you’re buying new stock suitable for forcing, consider the varieties Timperley Early, with its sweet champagne flavour, and Champagne, a reliable old-fashioned variety with long, slender, pink-tinged stalks that do not need peeling.
Popular with chefs is Valentine, which has an outstanding sweet flavour. There’s a tip next month to buy your sweetheart.