Gardening Guru - Monty Don

Recently I was involved in volunteering at the Garden Show event at Antrim Castle Gardens in Northern Ireland, and was lucky to attend  a Question and Answer session with Monty Don which was fab! Monty has many an interesting story to tell! Then I was lucky (again) to have a chance for him to sign my book.

Monty has quite a fan base in Northern Ireland. In fact, when I meet up with the community gardening group on a Saturday morning, one of the first things anyone says is, 'did you see what Monty was up to on Gardener's World'!

Thanks Monty Don for signing my book!

Copyright: All words and photos are property of Kelli's Northern Ireland Garden.

Harvesting Rhubarb

The rhubarb is ready for harvesting!

Rhubarb is one of the most reliable plants I've grown over the years. Its an early-cropper, while many other plants are just coming into growth at this time.

I've always grown rhubarb in a slightly shady area of the garden. I generally mulch it once a year and leave it to its own devices. Two of my four plants are growing at different paces - this is luck and perfect for staggering the harvests a bit. I've no idea what variety I have as the plants were given to me by two different people.

What to do with the rhubarb? I saw a recipe in Tesco (grocery store) magazine about a month back, stuck it on the fridge so I wouldn't misplace it, and waited for my rhubarb to grow big enough to harvest.  This weekend I made 'Soured Cream and Rhubarb Tea Cake' - yummy! Above is a picture of the cake on the recipe page - always a bonus when what I make resembles the picutre!  It tastes delicious. Each serving has 23 grams of fat and 477 calories - no wonder it tastes so good! 

Tesco recipes can be found at: https://realfood.tesco.com/

Copyright: All words and photos are property of Kelli's Northern Ireland Garden.