There is nothing easier to grow than perennial vegetables,
and one of those that I always grow is Rhubarb.
There's nothing that beats having Rubarb pie or Rhubarb crumble after a meal.
You can greatly enhance your harvests. So, in this video,
I'm going to show you how you can get the best out of your rhubarb.
I'm Tony O'Neill and this is Simplify Gardening where I show you, how to garden in a simpler way.
There are many ways in which to start growing rhubarb and although you can plant them from seed,
most people will grow them from crowns.
Now, there are advantages to this, with crowns you can get a small harvest in your first year.
With seed, you have to wait for two years.
Now we have our plants and however, you decide to grow them, whether that is
from seed or crowns we next need to look at where to plant them.
Rhubarb is not fussy about the soil quality and it can be pretty much anything. However,
they are really hungry plants and they require huge amounts of water. So plant them
next to a water container that will save you a lot of work.
And as you can see, mine are planted right next to this IBC container. So when I am watering
in and out of this IBC container, Well, any overspill gets absorbed by the soil, and then,
that helps the plants to grow really well. You can see this one here is much taller than the
others. And that's because it's getting more water from the overspill. And as I have already said,
they require huge amounts of water to do really well.
So, let's take the soil into consideration, when your planting your rhubarb you need to
think about your soil. It needs lots of organic matter dug into it.
Now I know I said they are not fussy about their soil, but, what I meant by that is that they are
not bothered by whether it is clay soil or sandy soil or anything like that. But,
the more organic matter you can put into that soil the more water retention will help with these.
And, when you're coming to preparing this bed of soil, you need to put a couple of things in
it. Something like this farmyard manure will be fantastic or chicken manure pellets. They are
big leafy plants and they require huge amounts of nitrogen. So a good chunk of chicken manure
pellets in that soil is going to help, and give regular feedings throughout the season as well.
Another thing that can help get your plants established is some bonemeal. If you can
get some bonemeal into the ground that is really going to help the plant and the crown
send down those root systems in order to support the foliage like this. I mean some
of these leaves are getting on for over a meter, three and a half feet wide maybe a bit more.
Another thing we want to be mindful of is where we are planting as I said, and that we need to
consider planting them in a sunny position. These are like solar panels and they really absorb that
sun to feed the crown. So, it's fantastic if you can get them out and put them in a nice
sunny position. They'll do really well and that's when you will get the huge growth you see here.
The other thing about rhubarb is they are accumulators. And, they have huge tap roots
that push right down to the lower depths of the soil. And they pull those nutrients up
and it's those nutrients that are able to fund this growth. Now, when you are planting them,
plant them up on a mound because that will stop water pooling into the crown and rotting it.
And when your planting the crowns, plant just below the soil layer, about an inch.
But, if you clay soils, then you want them to protrude just out of that ground so
that they are not buried by clay when it's caked.
And rhubarb is great in containers too. When growing in containers, you want to use something
that is about 70 liters or 19 US gallons. Because these get huge plants as you can see.
Also when growing in containers, make sure you put the feed in there
and make sure they never dry out, because containers will dry out. It's a very
thirsty plant and you need to be watering it constantly if you're putting it in a container.
Now, at the start of spring, just as those buds are starting to push through the soil. Well,
you need to give them really good mulching of manure. Something like farmyard manure,
horse manure, or cow manure something like that. And, give them a really good thick
mulch. about half a foot to a foot worth of mulch. What this does when the weather comes
in early spring as it typically does the rain will beat the nutrients out of that compost and
push it down into the soil levels and the plant can take that up as well. And also at this stage,
as I say, give it another sprinkle of chicken manure pellets too. They are hungry plants.
So, During the string as they are pushing these buds now is the perfect time to decide how you're
going to grow it. You can force rhubarb and this will give you much more delicate stems
and to do this you literally just put on a dark container over the top. An upturned
dustbin or a chimney pot something like that. You must commit all light. But, be weary doing this,
don't do it too often because it puts a lot of strain on the plant. If you're not forcing
your rhubarb, then nows the time to give it a huge amount of water. I know it rains a lot in spring,
but this is when those buds are starting to push, and getting that reservoir of water down
now is important. So when you first start to see those shoots coming give them about 12 liters of
water per plant per week. It's a huge amount of water but it really does make a big difference.
Throughout the season, you're going to need to give them additional feeds and what I do,
is I feed once a week and I alternate, so one week I am going to give them a load of chicken manure
pellets and I'm literally just throwing the down towards the crown there so that when it rains or
when I water those chicken manure pellets spread and get pushed down into the soil. And then, maybe
the second or third week out of the month I will give them a seaweed feed as well which is pushing
even more different macro and micronutrients as well as trace minerals into the ground here for
these plants. And, that's exactly how I got these plants to be like this and how I produced stems
like this. Now, from time to time, well your plant is going to get stressed and tired and this whole
row here is created from one single plant where I split it. This reinvigorates that plant. Now,
to do that I have a very old video from about three or four years ago, three years ago I think
when I did these ones. I will put that up in the corner here for you and down in the description.
But essentially you are splitting the crown and replanting that crown. And
if you are wanting to grow rhubarb you really need to see how I planted these. Now initially
I planted them just down by there, at the bottom of the garden, right along the fence line.
But I found that they weren't in the best place because I moved that fence and that was where
I was getting manure dropped off. So I moved them last year up here. And at that point, we
lost quite a bit of the root system and t really set these back. But we did have
a good crop off them even still last year and this year they are looking absolutely amazing.
Now from time to time your rhubarb s going to send up a flower stalk. And it's really
important to remove that right away because if you allow it to flower it then turns to seed. This
draws huge amounts of energy out of the crown, and it can kill your plants. Now, this particular
one I left way too long because it's at another section of the garden behind the fruit orchard
and I totally didn't see it and I have been concentrating down this end of the garden for
most of the year, so I never really got up there. And as you can see, It's totally gone to seed.
Now these seeds I have cut off, they are falling off already and I'll collect them and I will
grow them next year and show you how you can grow rhubarb from seed. But, as I said, it's
really important if you see that flowers stalk, cut it off as soon as you see it. You still get
your rhubarb for that year, but after the growth for that year, you need to split your crowns.
Rhubarb is pretty resilient as a plant. But it does have a few things that you need to watch for.
And one of those is crown rot. Now crown rot is devastating to rhubarb if you don't catch it.
As soon as you see crown rot, there's a thing that needs to do and that is to literally get
in there with a knife and cut that section out of the crown to prevent that rot from
spreading any further. Now don't worry about the crown, it will recover really quickly
if you get all that crown rot out. If you don't, that crown rot will definitely kill your plants.
And another thing that you should watch for with rhubarb is slugs. Now slugs will
get on these and they will decimate the plant. Now, I use nematodes in which to control this,
and although they are quite expensive to buy they basically suspended in a clay formation,
they are really expensive to buy. So I make my own. I have a video o that also which shows you
how to make your own slug nematodes and I will put that down in the description below too.
But you really need to control those slugs also.
So we're at the back of my fruit orchard at the moment and we've got some
smaller rhubarb here as I said. I haven't paid any attention to these and they have still done well.
Now when picking your rhubarb it's really important in which to twist the plant as you pull
and you want to take it out and have this little white section on the
stalk, you want to be pulling it all.DOn't ever cut the rhubarb at the stem,
because that will rot back into the crown. And this is a perfect way, you get the nice
length of the stalk, clean and you just got this little tag on the end that shows you that you
did a good job in harvesting your rhubarb. And you can literally just pick it and twist
and again you see that little white section on the stem and another nice length of rhubarb there.
Now when harvesting your rhubarb, don't take more than one-third of the plant at any one year.
I would suggest, these will continue to keep growing so you can keep harvesting but
what I would suggest you do is don't take any more than a third of the plant. I just take a couple of
stalks from each. Towards the end of June, I would stop harvesting altogether and allow these leaves
time to pull that nutrition and goodness back down into the crown to feed it for ready winter.
Something I always get asked is about the rhubarb leaves. So when you harvest you cut
the leaf off and obviously we eat the stalks. We can't eat these because they are poisonous to us,
but something I always get asked is, can they be put on the compost? and the answer to that
is yes. Another thing you can do with them, like most accumulators like the nettles and the comfrey
and everything else, you can use rhubarb leaves and make a rhubarb tea. Those leaves are holding
a lot of those nutrients that have been pulled up from deep within the soil, and they can be
used to make your own rhubarb tea. So literally just put this into a bucket of water along with
all the other leaves, cram them down, cover it in water, and put it away for about six weeks.
It will smell when you make it, but it will make a fantastic feed for your plants. And it's ideal
much like Comfrey for things that are fruiting or flowering. So just bear that in mind, you can
use it in multiple ways. Don't throw it away, put it in the compost or make teas out of it.
In the autumn or fall, Well we need to start pulling away the leaves that are rotting.
And they will yellow and start turning to a mess
pull them away from the plant. Don't worry about the plant over winter, we need to get that sorted,
but it will clear up that area away because one of the biggest things for attracting slugs
is decaying matter. Remove them all that are rotting and gone yellow and put them into your
compost. Now don't worry about over winter, whether or not the crowns will freeze because
they actually need that freezing time. They do much better after getting frozen in the winter.
There are hundreds of varieties of rhubarb. Some of them are very dainty and delicate and then you
have others like this. I have had a few chats with people and originally I was given this plant as,
or I purchased this plant as Timperley Early. But that's been thrown into a bit of
confusion lately I suppose, because, a few other people suggest it might be Champagne.
So although it was purchased under one thing, there is a chance that it could have well been
marked up wrong at the nursery. Now I have had this plant for nearly 12 years and it
started off just as a small crown and it's done all of this across here where I have split it
over the years. And the great thing is, it's a fantastic plant, it does really well for me.
Whatever the variety, whether it's champagne or whether it's Timperley Early
follows these directions because they will really help you out.
Something else U get asked a lot about these is, Why do you want to grow them so big? aren't they
tough when you eat them? and do you know what? They are not, you can pull the biggest harvest of
these things and they are just as tender when they are cooked as any of the other dainty varieties I
have at the back there. And they are fantastic and I will eat a fair bit of this throughout the year.
Now the two stems I showed you earlier on, well both of those went into a crumble and we
ate that crumble with no issues at all and it wasn't stringy.
So don't be afraid to grow it large like this, it really does give you a lot of bang for its buck.
If you found value in this video, then you can subscribe here. When you have done that,
if you wanna know how I grew these from crowns, then this is the next video that you should watch.
I'm Tony O'Neill, this is Simplify Gardening where I show you how to garden in a simpler
way. Remember folks you reap what you sow and I will see you in the next one.