Rhubarb. Growing Rhubarb.

Rhubarb is easy to grow but in the beginning you need patience.

This is my experience of planting rhubarb crowns to grow my own rhubarb, written in a light hearted way.

Soon I may be suffering from something that I can only describe as ‘rhubarb envy’. However I am not an envious person by nature. Never has a luxury car driven past me while I was standing at the bus stop in the rain and I had the thought I would like a car like that. Nor have I ever stared into the window of a designer shoe shop and been overcome a sense of urgency to purchase a pair of killer heels come what may. I have been looked at through the plate glass window by the sales assistant of said shop and the look said I was not fit to polish the said pair of shoes; but that’s another story.

No envy for me comes in the shape of someone’s ability to grow something that I have not mastered yet. That may or may not be rhubarb this year. My first year growing vegetables at the allotment I hit beginner’s luck in a patch of overgrown couch grass and brambles (not so lucky) I discovered four or five rhubarb plants struggling to push through the tangle and survive.

These plants produced enough rhubarb to make compote,crumbles, and stewed rhubarb and pies for the whole of the rhubarb growing season.

However the plants had to be rescued in order to clear the weeds from the area and they also needed lifting and splitting. I did this by the book preparing an area and planting as per instructions. You are told in gardening books not to harvest newly planted rhubarb in the first year. So I had to watch as this patch of rhubarb did its own thing in a sort of lesser version than the previous year even though it was now free from weeds. I think we had two bowls of compote from a plant I had not yet moved, while the newly planted rhubarb enjoyed the enriched weed free environment I had moved it to. This year I have covered the first two plants to show signs of growth with a bucket to force it. (Lack of light forces the rhubarb and that is it makes it grow into tasty slender early season rhubarb.)

The price of rhubarb in the shops and the ease with which it grows once established will not allow me to buy it from the supermarket. So now I am left wondering are my efforts going to pay off; or am I going to be left suffering from rhubarb envy? Only time will tell so I wait with anticipation to see if all is well in the rhubarb patch this year.

they are just resting.

It is a good idea to apply a mulch of compost or well rotted horse manure around your rhubarb plants in the autumn. Frost will not harm your rhubarb plants it is said to improve the flavour ?

If you have sandy soil you will need to enrich it with well rotted horse muck or compost before planting your rhubarb crowns.

In Autumn you will notice the leaves and stalks of the rhubarb plant withering and dying off this is normal. It can be a good idea to mark where the plants are with a stick or marker - as they will be difficult to see until the the new foliage begins to grow next spring. This is important if you intend to force your rhubarb later to produce an early crop at a time when the shop prices are at their highest.

Timperley Early: (Early Variety) If forced this develops a better colour. 

Forcing rhubarb is when you cover it with a special terracotta forcing jar/pot or you can use a bucket or a dustbin upturned and place over the rhubarb plant to exclude the light this is done early before the plant has sprouted leaves.

The result of forcing rhubarb is it produces thinner tastier rhubarb that has a 'delicate but tasty flavour' the colour is also very attractive and the sticks of rhubarb tend to be slimmer (in diameter).

Raspberry Red Rhubarb:  (Mid-Season) Pinky-red rhubarb it tends to need less sugar when cooking this variety of rhubarb.

Queen Victoria: (Mid-Late Season) Good yields from this greeny-pink rhubarb and a good flavour too.

Stockbridge Arrow:   (Main crop) Easy to grow. Red stalks/sticks good for baking tarts and rhubarb crumble.

Fulton's Strawberry Surprise:  (Main crop) Red stalks/sticks of rhubarb. Keeps its shape when cooked. C

Cooking  Rhubarb one method is:

• Cut up the rhubarb stalks into reasonable sized pieces 1" - 2" long.
• Place in an oven proof dish and sprinkle with sugar. The tarter/sharper the taste of your rhubarb the more sugar it will need to enhance the flavour. Vanilla sugar* is nice  to use with rhubarb. 
• Bake it in the oven until cooked but not for too long so that it is still in shape.

This week I picked/pulled 2KGs of Rhubarb - so now the rhubarb crowns are producing enough for me to cook and to share it with family and friends.

It is still very exspensive in the shops though goodness knows why.

I guess there is some truth in the old saying - "Where there's muck there's money." as we all know what it is that makes rhubarb grow.

Traditionally in England rhubarb was cooked and served with custard or made into fruit pies or a desert called rhubarb crumble.

Rhubarb is tasty when served with Greek yogurt or on what we call porridge (I think elsewhere it is called oatmeal) for breakfast.

For years rhubarb became a unpopular food as it was almost considered a 'poor man's' food but in the last few years it has become really popular with articles about it in our weekend newspaper magazines and on TV cookery programmes.

The first rhubarb of the season for the people who grow there own is the forced rhubarb where you cover the plant to exclude the light, this produces a  paler and tasty version. When the first rhubarb appears in the shops here in the spring it is now quite expensive to buy, it is grown in an area of England known as the 'rhubarb triangle'. In some countries 'forcing rhubarb ' is called 'extruding rhubarb'.

Update - April 2nd. 2012. The predicted bad year for rhubarb due to a lack of really cold winter weather, seems unlikely. Yesterday I picked the first tender shoots of forced rhubarb when visiting the vegetable plot. There was just enough to make one serving of compote, although I had to add an apple to it when cooking to make up the quantity. The compote was really tasty and I am looking forward to picking more rhubarb soon.