12 - Other Uses of Rhubarb

Rhubarb has many uses. The most common is medicinal. Rhubarb has been used in medicines and folk healing for centuries.

12.1 - Cleaning pots and pans

Use Rhubarb to clean your pots and pans (no joke!) If your pots and pans are burnt, fear not! An application of rhubarb over the afflicted area will bring back the shine in next to no time. Environmentally friendly too! ⁸

Rheum palmatum

12.2 - Hair Color

This is a fairly strong dye that can create a more golden hair color for persons whose hair is blond or light brown. Simmer 3 tbsp. of rhubarb root in 2 cups of water for 15 minutes, set aside overnight, and strain. Test on a few strands to determine the effect, then pour through the hair for a rinse. ^{26, 39}

12.3 - Insecticide

Rhubarb leaves can be used to make an effective organic insecticide for any of the leaf eating insects (cabbage caterpillars, aphids, peach and cherry slug etc). ^6,15

12.3.1 - Recipe 1

• Basically you boil up a few pounds of rhubarb leaves in a few pints of water for about 15 or 20 minutes,
• allow to cool,
• then strain the liquid into a suitable container.
• Dissolve some soap flakes in this liquid and use it to spray against aphids.

So, next time you pick some rhubarb stems to eat, you can put the leaves to good use rather than just composting them (which isn't in itself such a bad use, I guess).

12.3.2 - Recipe 2

• Shred 1.5 kg (3 lbs.) rhubarb leaves
• and boil in 3.5 liters (1 gallon) of water for 30 minutes.
• Allow to cool and then strain. (use old utensils if you can - the rhubarb will stain most things and poison the rest.
• In a small saucepan heat to boiling point 2.5 litters (2.5 quarts) of water and mix in 125 g (4 oz) of softened soap ends (any bits of soap left in the shower).
• Allow to cool (stirring regularly to make sure all the soap is dissolved).
• Add to the strained leaf mixture, stir vigorously, and the spray directly onto infested leaves.

The unused spray can be kept for a day or two, but keep your kids away its still quite harmful.

12.4 - Rhubarb inspired art

12.4.1 - Paintings

James Grainger, is a British artist who specializes in oil paintings of Vicars and Morris Dancers in curious and surreal situations. Many of his paintings include rhubarb, as can be seen in the sample to the right. Be sure to visit his web page: James Grainger's Gallery

12.4.2 - Music

12.4.3 - Poetry

12.5 - CFC control

The January 19 issue of SCIENCE Magazine reported that scientists have discovered a way to convert environmentally damaging chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) such as Freon into four harmless components: sodium chloride (table salt), sodium fluoride (an ingredient used in toothpaste), carbon, and carbon dioxide. CFCs have been historically hard to destroy, because they are relatively inert. Professor Robert Crabtree and graduate student Juan Burdeniuc used sodium oxalate that is found in rhubarb leaves to destroy CFCs. (The article didn't mention if the researches actually got the sodium oxalate from rhubarb leaves or not but did mention that is where it is found). ³⁴

Rhubarb Plant

12.6 - Rhubarb Paper

Apparently the fiber in rhubarb is a nice additive to handmade papers. I have found several craft-folk selling or mentioning rhubarb-paper. Here is a sample from "BETH BAKER: Handmade Papers and Journals". ¹⁰¹

Rhubarb Paper

Readers of The Rhubarb Compendium may be interested in...

Play With Your Food
Joost Elffers, Saxton Freymann

Consisting primarily of color photos of the creatures, first in portraiture and then in step-by-step "recipes" for their creation, Play with Your Food teaches readers above all to see. In addition to limning techniques, the minimal text provides a short look at manmade and natural imagery that suggests or embodies the possibilities of metamorphosis. Then it's on to the creatures themselves and the fun of constructing them. Anyone who enjoys play and the magic of transformation will want Joost's book--and having seen it, will never look at eatables in the same way again. [b14]

Footnotes

• 6. rhubarb vs. aphids, http://www.lysator.liu.se/ftp/pub/gardening/Edibles/rhubarb_vs_aphids,  
• 8. Wisdom from Dr. Elizabeth Rutherford of the Cognitive Laboratory, Psychology Department, http://babelfish.psy.uwa.edu.au/brent/fos/eliza/rhub.html, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia   
• 11. The Rhubarb Tart song, From the  Illinois State University's College of Fine Arts World Wide Web (WWW) Server, Sponsored by The Office of Research in Arts Technology (ORAT), The College of Fine Arts at Illinois State, and Illinois State University,  "Its a Monty Python Collection"    
• 15. http://tyndale.apana.org.au/~paddo/rhubarb.html, from The wisdom of Tony Savage   
• 26. Rhubarb Root Golden Hair Coloring, http://www.howtodirectory.com, From The How-To Directory, is a growing database of how-to information; the collected knowledge of generations gathered from individuals and companies who are willing to share their memories and experiences with others.  
• 34. Rhubarb plus Freon yields toothpaste and salt by Chris Nelder, from http://www.betterworld.com/BWZ/9602/explore1.htm
• 39. http://www.howtodirectory.com/folklore/rhubarb.html, The How-To Directory is a growing database of how-to information; the collected knowledge of generations gathered from individuals and companies who are willing to share their memories and experiences with others.
• 101. http://art-a-whirl.org/aawbldgs/wndmcf.htm, The Windom Park CafÚ and Gallery 1998.