Does anyone here grow rhubarb?

[JohnD]

Mine has nice red stems when they first come up, but when they are thick enough to use, they have gone green. Is it exposure to light that causes it, and should I be growing them up a chimneypot or something?

 

[ellal]

How long have you had your plants? The first year or so you shouldn't take a crop.

We have a large plot of them (have had nearly 50kg this year), but have never had totally green stems. If it's a mixture of colours, or even majority green they can still be used. Just make sure you don't pick too late - we stop at the middle/end of june as the plant has a 'dormancy switch' that kicks in.

Using a chimney pot would be akin to 'forcing' the plant if blocked off at the top, which produces an earlier pinkier stem. This is the light issue you talk of, but we've had no problems with the later crop. We rotate our crowns each year when doing this so that we have one lot of 'earlies' and let the rest grow as normal.

What do you feed them? We've found that we get best results if we heap well rotted manure all over the crowns in the autumn.

 

[JohnD]

I grew them from seed last year and transplanted in spring. The big ones in a sunny bed are plenty big enough (leaves over a foot across, half a dozen stems). The variety I grew is supposed to have red stems, but I have lost the packet.

Soil is well-composted and mulched, quite heavy and moist.

I prefer to put custard on mine

 

[ellal]

There's your problem..

You need to wait at least 3 years before you get a decent crop if you use seeds instead of 'crowns'...

 

[JohnD]

I'm happy with the amount of crop, it's the colour I don't like.

I am not cropping the smaller plants.

 

[ellal]

It's got nothing to do with the amount it's the development of the plant!

From seed you take nothing for the first two years, and then some stems in the third. After that you can crop normally.

Using crowns, take one year off the timescale above.