Growing Rhubarb

Growing fruit is a wonderful way to supplement your fresh home grown diet. The obvious choices are apples, pears and soft fruit such as strawberries which are easy to grow in a small garden. Most of these mature from summer to autumn which leaves a shortage of fruit earlier in the season.

Grow Rhubarb; every garden should have at least one clump for early summer puddings. What’s more you can buy ready to plant rhubarb crowns now. Unwins Rhubarb is a specially selected variety called Victoria, that produces succulent pink stems with a delicious tart flavour. Plant this herbaceous perennial now and it will establish over the summer then die back to ground level in the winter. Next year the plant will regrow from the crown, with strong healthy stems ready to harvest in spring. Your plant will produce tasty stems for the next five or so years and sometimes for much longer.

Planting
Choose a spot where your rhubarb has room to mature and grow. An established clump could measure 2-3ft in diameter, though once it is that big it should ideally be divided into smaller pieces and replanted.
Rhubarb is a heavy feeder and needs soil rich in organic matter. Dig over the soil thoroughly and incorporate Westland organic Farmyard Manure into the ground. Be generous, this will provide a slow and steady release of nutrients to your plants as they mature.
Dig a hole, twice the size and depth of the rhubarb crown and fill the base of the hole with organic Vegetable Growing Compost. Place the rhubarb crown in the base of the hole with the roots at the bottom and the dormant shoots at the top. Cover over with a generous layer of organic Vegetable Growing Compost and water thoroughly. Mulch over the top with a generous layer of organic Farmyard Manure.
Feed the crowns once established with Nutri Plant Feed or if you are feeding a lot of plants in the garden you can also use Feed-all Soluble Plant Food which offers good value when feeding large numbers of plants.

Harvesting
Avoid harvesting stems in the first year of growth as the will weaken your plant. Instead nurture it by watering and feeding throughout the season so that the underground rhizome establishes well, this will ensure a strong plant next season. If you plant starts to make a flower spike, cut this off as soon as you see it as close to the crown as possible.
Rhubarb is hardy so it doesn’t need any special cosseting over the winter, though a mulch of Westland Decorative Mini Bark or organic Farmyard Manure will protect the underground rhizome and the developing shoots.
In year two you can harvest a small number of stems for the first two to three weeks of growth. Don’t ever cut off more than half of the stems, or you will weaken the plants. In the third year of growth you can harvest stems for 2-3 months early in the season. Choose fat, pink stems where the leaf is fully formed but not yet aged, for the tastiest rhubarb.

Forcing
For very early crops of rhubarb in March and April, established clumps can be forced into earlier growth by mulching well with Westland Decorative Mini Bark or organic Farmyard Manure and covering with a rhubarb forcer or an upturned bucket. The clump needs to be starved of light to form beautiful, long and very pink stems with the best possible taste.

  

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