Kitchen Garden Forum

I live in England. My back garden is excessively shaded by neighbours' trees which have grown up over the years, but in about the remaining sunniest spot I have a patch of rhubarb, which I manure well in the winter, mostly with lawn mowings.

I know how to avoid overloading the plant; I prefer to pull only one leaf per crown per picking, and to leave the plant with a full cover of leaves to act as solar panels for the plant, etc.

It is late September, and my rhubarb is likely thinking of letting its leaves flop down and die off for the winter. When it starts to flop, would it harm the plant if I pull off all remaining leaves and send their stems to the kitchen?

Rhubarb will be shedding all their stalks naturally now at this time of the year in preparation for its winter shutdown so I don't think it will do any harm to pull off all the remaining stalks for the kitchen. You may find though that they probably don!t have very much flavour left in them at this time of year. I have two rhubarb plants , one of whixh grows at the bae of a north facing fence and gets no sun at all but still produces some healthy stems. i rarely pick the stalks after the end of June/early July though.

My Rhubarb has already started to shut down for Winter. I doubt I even have 1 stem to take. If you have any to take Anthony then I would do so as your time frame is closing & once it makes it move it is quick. Call it an experiment to test out the taste & feed back for us. I took some stems a few weeks ago & they made fine rhubarb & apple crumble with no discernible taste difference.

Westi

Anthony, you will probably find that at this time of the year the rhubarb stalks are no longer very edible, often limp and/or hollow. If they are still ok, I would certainly use a few though not all.