Kitchen Garden Forum

Hi there,

I've been googling and reading various articles that suggest you should not harvest newly planted rhubarb in the first year.

Do you agree with this?

If so, do you literally let to grow and don't perform any maintenance at all on it?

Note I'm growning the rhubarb in a container, so I don't know if that makes any difference.

Yes I agree.

Doubt the viability of growing rhubarb in a container.

This is interesting, I grew some plants that were sown from seed, from seed this is year two, or it might be year three (Senior tolerance please) . Did you buy established crowns ?

My plants are just starting to grow some stalks and big leaves though not much happened until I mulched them with cow-poo. I'm not sure what to do and I already bought two forcing thingies.

They seem to be doing ok. See attached.
The container is 60 cm x 60 cm by about 50 cm deep.
I'm using JI #3
At least 3 of the steams are at 40cm+ long

Remove any flower spikes that appear, don't let the containers dry out, but avoid sogginess and keep them fed, Richards diet below is good in moderation.

peter wrote: Richards diet below is good in moderation.

I did manage to overcome the over-watering, that's easy compared to deciding about nutrient.

Clearly, some plants love very rich soil and thrive on heavy nutrient. Some hate it, turn a funny colour and die or and take ages to recover after remedial action.

I thought I had read in my RHS allotment book to add plenty of well-rotted manure to the soil around rhubarb and thats why I placed it with comfrey. Comfrey responds-nicely to heavy nutrient.

To be honest, some books are lacking in essential information whilst making illustration a primary interest for the reader to the point where the reader is happy bunging any plant in any-old-ground.

The main reason I'm concerned about nutrient is that a lot of top-soil was disturbed, even taken to other sites when the developer bought this farm and converted the two barns. They buried a lot of rubbish which was exposed when we bought the plot and re-arraged it yet-again.

I just looked in my RHS book, rhubarb will "grow in most situations" (Referring to shade or sunny) Advise is for "lots of well-rotted manure" and not to pick any stalk after late spring. If you pick stalks now they say it will weaken the plant.

I was just about to pick some stalks for this weekend. Damn and blast.

I'm not sure about the advice to stop picking rhubarb after late spring. Me, I stop when the first of the main fruit crop ripens. After then, rhubarb is not very nice anyway — too tart. I'm not convinced picking later will weaken the plant. I had a spot of rhubarb for me tea last night. Still very nice.

Advice regarding not picking in the first year is sound. This applies to rhubarb which is planted as a mature division of an established crown, ideally of a reliable variety. When growing from seed, give it three years. From seed, there is a risk that the plants will flower readily. My mother has rhubarb in her garden which has been there for over 30 years. It never flowers. It gets a mulch of compost when I remember to do so, but doesn't suffer in the years when it doesn't. They say to put manure on rhubarb: me, I prefer mine with custard.

FelixLeiter wrote:They say to put manure on rhubarb: me, I prefer mine with custard.

Thanks for sharing your views Felix, and the the advise. Regarding the cow-poo compost, out of five plants I I left one as it was. The other four were mulched with two large shovels of well rotted cow poo, the lonely fifth is a weakling. The mulched plants are telling me they like it just by the size of the stalks and massive leaves.

Do I leave the stalks to fall away naturally ?

FelixLeiter wrote:I'm not sure about the advice to stop picking rhubarb after late spring. Me, I stop when the first of the main fruit crop ripens.

What does ,"Ripen" mean with rhubarb ?

I was just topping up the cow-poo mulch in my comfrey bed which also grows my first rhubarb, today I couldn't resist pulling a nice fat stalk to cook it just to see how it tastes. The stalk was mostly green rather than the red stalks I see in our greengrocer so presumably I picked an unripened stalk.

It tasted good.

I've also been eating half ripened strawberries that also tasted good.

It most be the cow-poo and comfrey.

On the basis of the five plants I have and the spread of the leaves I can feel another raised-bed coming on just for rhubarb, those leaves shade everything.

http://www.rhubarbinfo.com/poison

http://rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=544

Red or pink stems are sweeter, produced by keeping them in the dark while growing.

Green stems are sour and, to me at any rate unpleasant, they are also likely to contain traces of oxalic acid, an unpleasant poison.
The leaves hold more, you'd need to consume pounds of them to die, but you'd be pretty uncomfortable with much less.

On ground's of quality of flavour alone use ripe stems, a compost bin makes a fair g
forcing cover with soil to seal it to the ground and preferably a cheapie without a shovel hatch.

Thanks Peter.

My green stem wasn't sour though I did put a lot of sugar in, I assumed that most stewed rhubarb I tasted had sugar.

Wasn't there a rule about picking only when there is an 'R' in the month, or am I having a senior moment.

I'm embarrassed. We bought two posh clay forcers, I'm not-encouraged to do things like grow potatoes in a stack of tyres though I am encouraged to keep costs down so we can buy more shoes, bags, frocks and other endless items we have multiples of. I relaxed about it.

The clay forcers were part of a job-lot our garden centre had bought a few years back and still had the £25 price tag on, I've seem similar ones for £50. She liked them and everyone is happy.

Forcing will be tried next spring after the plants have grown more root, they'll be in their third year then.

Ricard with an H wrote:

FelixLeiter wrote:I'm not sure about the advice to stop picking rhubarb after late spring. Me, I stop when the first of the main fruit crop ripens.

What does ,"Ripen" mean with rhubarb ?

When I referred to the main fruit crop ripening, I meant all the other fruits in the fruit patch: strawberries, raspberries, currants. It's when these come on stream that I move away from the rhubarb until next year. By now, rhubarb's starting to get a bit tart and leaving it to grow unfettered for the rest of the season helps keeps the crowns strong.

"Ripe" is not a term that can be applied to rhubarb. Green or red stems — there's no difference in flavour or eating quality. That's more to do with changes in growing conditions and / or the season advancing.

FelixLeiter wrote:"Ripe" is not a term that can be applied to rhubarb. Green or red stems — there's no difference in flavour or eating quality. That's more to do with changes in growing conditions and / or the season advancing.

That sounds about right. Felix, I'm not only a learner at growing rhubarb, I'm also a learner at using it. Yesterday I noticed two stalks that had reddened so I pulled them and stewed them. The only difference I could detect was the amount of sugar, less sugar equalled more tartness, are you saying that rhubarb attains sweetness or just less tart ?

I'm now confident that my plants are happy in their environment and that they are in the right place considering other planting, the fifth plant that didn't get a cow-poo mulch looks comparativly-sad though I have now laid another thickness of cow-poo over the whole patch that is dedicated to comfrey and rhubarb.

we pick rhubarb (red or green!) until the end of June (unless it is floopy of course), then the oxalic acid content starts to increase, so we leave it alone, and it does it's thing until it gets cold and starts to die back for the winter, which is when it gets a thick layer of compost or poop or both.

Ahhhh, it goes all-floopy. I wondered what happened.

That 'R' in the month thing must have applied to something else, maybe shooting geese.

Thanks for the tip though and the oxalic acid warning, I've been reading every thing I could get hold of on rhubarb growing and whilst there are a few variables I'm now comfy that I'm doing things right.