Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb is also worth saying if you feel like a simple, home-grown dessert.

This is the perfect time for eating rhubarb, with new tender rhubarb stems springing up from spring warm, rain damp soil. It's also the perfect time to plant rhubarb or to feed it, so it keeps feeding you, or to mulch it well to keep in soil moisture and help keep the stems succulent instead of stringy.

I am never sure which variety of rhubarb is best. Wandin Winter gives new stems except in the coldest part of the year, and the stems are reddish, too. But most rhubarb stems that grew in autumn don't rot in winter, although a few varieties do die back, so four plants that bear well in autumn are enough for an average family of rhubarb eaters, even if the plants don't offer more growth in winter, especially if you also have a freezer full of last year's stewed apple and rhubarb, one of those magic combinations, though plums and rhubarb stewed in orange juice with a touch of port can be extraordinarily delicious too.

Rhubarb grows in full sun or lightly dappled shade – in very hot dry summers it does best with the dapples. It grows best very well fed indeed, but if you're not going to eat it often, or are away for a few weeks/months/decades it will survive with no care whatsoever unless covered by an invading blackberry clump or kikuyu. Even black tailed wallabies ignore rhubarb except in hard times. Their nibbling then worries me slightly as rhubarb leaves are toxic, but then many other delicacies of a black-tailed wallaby's natural diet are toxic to humans. Nonetheless, I now grow our rhubarb where wallaby paws can't reach it. If they want dicey diets it's their prerogative, but I'm not going to add to it.

Rhubarb grows from seed, and seedlings are cheap, but they will also tend to go to seed too, whereas you may be lucky enough to strike divisions from pants that rarely flower and seed. My technique with rhubarb flower heads is to break them off as soon as they begin poking upwards. The bushes are mostly sufficiently cowed by this to stop trying to go to seed till next year, and put their energy into more rhubarb stems instead. It's the stems that you eat, by the way. Discard the leaves and don't feed them to the chooks, but compost them or just leave them to mulch around the plants. There is a reason why rhubarb leaves were once known as 'mother-in-law's lettuce, though the actual danger from them may be low – the only lethal cases I've read about were in England in World War II when some twit recommended them as a nice addition to the dinner plate. Nonetheless do not try them, either to eat or to dispose of Aunt Agatha.

If you want to grow the best, biggest, most tender rhubarb, mulch well with a dryish mulch like lucerne hay or woodchips, not manure or anything that may rot so fast it encourages the base of the stems to rot too. Scatter on chook manure or other fertiliser every fortnight while it's growing strongly. Cease feeding when you need to put on a cardigan or jumper and the plant stops putting out new leaves. Water when the leaves still look limp after the day has cooled down a bit, or twice a week, whichever is the most frequent. Pick often, if you can, as older rhubarb stems tend to have tougher strings and not be as juicy. Otherwise pick the middle stems or whichever ones look the most tempting. You can de-string rhubarb, but it's fiddly. Best to avoid the strings in the first place.

Rhubarb used to be one of the great backyard stand-bys. The chooks might stop laying, the grasshoppers might eat the lettuce, the fruit fly invade the apricots, the celery wilt and the earwigs eat the strawberries, but you would still have rhubarb. And indeed you still can have rhubarb. Just plant it. If you want lots, either buy seed – it grows fast – or ask a friendly backyard rhubarb grower to let their plant go to seed, and harvest it as soon as it scatters on the soil or (even better and more generous) divide one of their plants.

Then in a few months, when you are feeling "what's for dessert-ish" you can murmur, "Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb".

* planting the seeds that have been accumulating in my seed box, including 'best planted by 1999' lettuce and 'best by 2006' rockmelon. So far nearly all the lettuce seeds – about 2436 of them at last count – have sprouted. Many plants produce seeds that will last for decades (and many of these are called 'weeds'). Others, like parsnips, for some weird evolutionary reason will only germinate for about a year. Buy fresh seed if you can, i.e. from a place with a high seed turnover where the packets haven't been on the shelf for ten years. Some seed merchants produce better quality seeds than others, but the laws of defamation probably prevent me telling you who is best and who are too often dud.

* hacking back even more of the rambling rose on what is supposed to be an archway over the path but has become more a 'trap for burglars, friends and visiting council officials if they happen to be over 1.5 metres tall'. Rambling roses should be pruned after they finish flowering and ours are still mid-bloom.

* hauling up suckers of the loganberry bush to give to a friend with an empty bit of fence for it to climb on. Loganberries aren't as invasive as blackberry, but still tend to demand far more than their fair share of garden. Do not try a Munich Agreement with your loganberry (if you don't know what the Munich Agreement was, and its pros and cons, especially the cons, Google it. It is useful knowledge for both bureaucrats and gardeners). Haul out loganberry suckers before they invade the asparagus bed. Or the Sudetenland.

* not quite getting around to transplanting more self-sown tomato and cucumber plants;

* watching the new tree fern fronds unfurl. Time to cut back the tatty underleaves.

* longing for just a few new large-growing grevilleas if I can find time to ferret out some interesting ones;

* not yet finding time to get rid of the tatty hanging baskets and the even tattier contents of some of them. If they don't look good in a lush spring they are never going to.

RECIPES

Rhubarb must be cooked, unless you are a slug, snail or black-tailed wallaby.

This is the most common way to cook and eat it. It can be delicate and delicious or very boring indeed if overcooked and sugary, especially if served with a not-very-good custard.

To make a non-boring stewed rhubarb, cut up stalks and throw away the leaves. If the rhubarb stems have prominent hard strings on the outside, pull them off.

Chop into small pieces. For every cup of rhubarb, add 2 tbs sugar or honey – but this varies according to taste; some people like more, others much less – especially if you are cooking it in orange juice.

Place in a saucepan and JUST cover with water – rhubarb needs surprisingly little liquid or, even better, orange juice. Simmer till soft. Some people prefer it cooked to a mash; others like it still in distinct but tender pieces – suit yourself. If you stew it gently and add the sugar at the beginning of the cooking time it will hold its shape better than if you add the sugar later. This applies to all stewed fruit, so if you want homogenous stewed apple for a pie, or mushy rhubarb, stir the sugar in at the end of cooking. If you want strawberries or delicate white nectarines to hold its shape don't add the sugar until the end.

For extra luxury, stir a few drops of rose water or Cointreau, but not both, into your stewed rhubarb when you take it off the heat or add a vanilla bean while cooking. Remove and dry the bean to reuse a few times afterwards.

Serve hot or cold, with ice cream, rice pudding, cereal or any other accompaniment that takes your fancy, but if it's custard, it must be very good indeed.

This holds its shape better than boiled.

Butter a baking dish. Cover with chopped rhubarb. Scatter on caster sugar and, possibly, a little grated orange rind or a few drops of Cointreau. Bake at 200 ºC for about 20 minutes or till soft. Eat with ice cream or cream or add to your morning muesli. Or porridge. It is particularly delicious added to porridge with milk and brown sugar.

As above, but without the sugar. Don't try to sweeten it artificially, but eat with a softish something, like cream or ice cream, that has been artificially sweetened instead. Or go for a good walk before and after eating, so you use up the sugar.

Splosh cooked rhubarb in the base of a baking dish. Mix one cup of cream with two eggs, one tablespoon caster sugar and a few drops of vanilla. Pour over rhubarb and dust with nutmeg (optional only if you don't have any nutmeg). Bake at 200 ºC till set – about twenty minutes, but this will depend on the shape of your dish – deep ones take longer to cook. Serve hot or cold.