Laisha
AI Operating System for Agriculture
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Laisha
AI Operating System for Agriculture
Enter Laisha
Rheum rhabarbarum · Also called: Garden rhubarb, Pie plant, Rabarber, Rhabarber, Rhubarbe, Ruibarbo, Revent, Common rhubarb
Photo: DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons)
Rhubarb is one of the least demanding perennial crops a grower in a cold climate can keep. One planting of crowns will crop for ten years or more, it comes up before almost anything else in spring, and it fills the hungry gap when there is nothing else fresh to sell. It also has a trick that very few vegetables offer: covered up and grown in complete darkness, it produces pale, tender, early stalks that fetch several times the price of ordinary ones, and this forcing costs nothing but a bucket and some patience. Set against that are two hard limits. It needs a genuinely cold winter, which rules out a great deal of the world. And its leaves are poisonous, which makes it the only crop in this library where part of the plant must be treated as waste rather than as a second harvest.
If you see: Stalks getting steadily thinner and more numerous year after year.
It likely means: The crown is old and crowded, or it has been pulled too hard, or it is hungry. All three are fixed by the same things.
Do this: Divide and replant the crowns every five to ten years.
If you see: A thick stalk rising from the centre of the plant carrying a large head of creamy flowers.
It likely means: The plant is trying to set seed. It is commonest on old crowns, stressed plants and some varieties more than others.
Do this: Cut the flower stalk out at its base as soon as you see it, before the flowers open.
If you see: Crowns that never shoot in spring and are soft, brown and foul-smelling when dug up.
It likely means: Crown rot following wet soil. Rhubarb will take cold and drought far better than it will take water standing around the crown in winter.
Do this: Plant on free-draining ground and on a slight ridge where the soil is heavy.
If you see: A plant that was cropping well and then collapses, with few leaves and weak growth the following year.
It likely means: It was pulled too hard. A rhubarb plant feeds its crown with its leaves, and a plant stripped bare has nothing left to do it with.
Do this: Never take more than about half the stalks at one time.
If you see: Short stumps of stalk left on the crown going brown and soft, with the rot spreading inwards.
It likely means: The stalks were cut instead of pulled. A cut leaves a stub that dies back into the crown and lets rot in.
Do this: Take hold low down and pull with a gentle twist so the stalk comes away cleanly.
If you see: Plants that survive but grow weakly and never crop properly, in a place with mild winters.
It likely means: The winter is not cold enough. Rhubarb needs a real dormant cold period before it will shoot strongly in spring.
Do this: Be honest about the climate before planting a large area.
Growing the crop is only part of the job. The last part is knowing what a normal harvest looks like where you are, and knowing what your rhubarb is worth before you agree a price with anybody.
If you forget every other page of this guide, keep these lines. They are the whole crop, in order, short enough to carry in your head.
What does the crop look like growing?
What does the plant look like when it starts in spring?
What part is harvested?