ACTION PLAN
Get ready for rhubarb
THIS is the prime month for planting rhubarb. It’s also the right time to give your mature rhubarb clumps an overhaul. If you already grow this delicious, health-giving fruit, your plants may be growing old and becoming less productive. Old clumps take up more space than necessary and, in a small garden, that matters.
Dig any oversized clumps out of the ground. You’ll find lots of corky root material at their centres. That can be chopped out and broken with a spade for composting.
Before doing that, cut away several healthy young divisions from the outsides of the clump. Each should have at least one dormant bud and some root.
The buds may be hard to spot, but appear as reddish, smoothsurfaced ‘bumps’ or pimples. Plant the divisions in well- dug, freedraining soil in a sunny spot. If you have well-rotted compost, dig that into the soil before planting. If not, sprinkle in a little fertiliser or bonemeal before planting — 50-100g per square metre is plenty.
If you’re planting several divisions, space them about 70cm apart. Shove a cane into the ground, so you know where they are. The first leaves will appear next spring, but don’t harvest from the new plants until spring 2022.
As well as being an easy crop to grow, rhubarb can be decorative. As a foliage plant in a big border, the red stems and enormous leaves make a stirring feature.
When you gather rhubarb for the kitchen, new leaves and stems appear remarkably quickly. The tall flowers’ spikes are handsome in July, too.