A Red & Green Delivery

Thank you to Pat for not only picking, but delivering, her excess carmine jewel cherries so that Grow 'N' Share could donate them this week! They are beautiful, large sour cherries that make your mouth pucker when you eat them fresh!

We also dropped off giant fordhook swiss chard to the Salvation Army today. If you're not familiar with eating chard, it tastes amazing sauteed with onions, garlic and dill!

Cherries & Rhubarb & Raspberries, Oh My!

A big thank you goes out to two homeowners this week: Marie for sharing her raspberries, rhubarb, shell peas and lettuce, and David for sharing his beautiful nanking cherries - we picked close to 37 pounds from just two bushes!

The large amounts of produce picked could not have been possible without countless volunteer hours - your help is greatly appreciated! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Tricia removes rhubarb leaves for composting.

Our junior volunteer picks a bucket of shell peas.

Tricia, Amber and Amanda busy picking in the raspberry patch.

Nanking cherry packages ready for drop off at the Salvation Army.

On Harvesting Rhubarb

Manitoba Fruit Share wrote a wonderful little post about how best to pick rhubarb, and here is an excerpt:

• pick from the outside in
• slide your hand to the base of the stalk and pull gently
• if pulling does not work, carefully cut the stalks as close to the ground as possible
• leave 1/3 of the stalks on the plant so it can continue to grow and thrive during the summer – NEVER pick all of the stalks from a rhubarb plant
• if you cut the leaves off the stalks at the picking location, ask the homeowner permission to put the leaves in their compost pile or take the leaves with you to compost at home or at another compost pile
• it is safe to compost rhubarb leaves, but never eat them

If you take care to harvest rhubarb properly, you will be rewarded with good plant growth and another harvest in a few weeks time!