Kitchen Garden Forum

My Rhubarb has been growing fine for about 4 years.A
few leaves are just coming up, but they have rusty coloured markings on. Is this desiesed & unusable, the end of this plant ?

Rhubarb is usually dying down at this time of the year, so perhaps if you wait until it is dormant and clear away all the old leaves and give it a mulch of compost and straw over winter. Then feed it in spring and see what next year's new leaves look like. It should last much longer than four years. If the new growth still looks diseased then get rid of it.

Plumpudding, Thank you for your reply. The trouble is these leaves are new growth

Rhubarb seems to have two sessions of growth, an early one, then it has a rest before sending another lot of leaves out. They all die off before winter. Perhaps yours is a later variety than mine, so isn't going over yet. If the new leaves look diseased you could remove and dispose of them and clear round the plant before mulching it.

The only snag is that if we have a mild spell it could encourage it to send some more new leaves out now when it should be finishing. I suppose if you did this and it sent up more blotchy leaves it might indicate something more serious than just a tired plant.