When can I eat my rhubarb?

Good‘s new gardening expert Zoe Carafice is ready and waiting to solve your dilemmas! Each question published on Zoe’s blog or in Good receives a fab prize from Tui Garden. This week: when is best to harvest your rhubarb.

Email your gardening questions to [email protected] and every question answered in Good or on Zoe’s blog will receive a fab prize from Tui Garden Products!

Q: After a year of growth, when can I begin to harvest my rhubarb? –Graham

A: It’s best to leave rhubarb for two years before harvesting to allow the plant to establish strong growth. I’m also trying to be patient as I wait out another year; I divided off some ‘crowns’ from my grandmother’s prized rhubarb plants last spring.

In the meantime, fatten your rhubarb up with lots of compost, sheep pellets and a good mulch of pea straw. They will also do well with regular watering over the dryer months. Harvest your rhubarb next spring when the stems are thick and ripe but always leave a few strong leaves on the plants and let them recover during the summer. Cut off flower stems as soon as they appear; they weaken the plants. The leaves of rhubarb are poisonous but can be added to your compost.

Rhubarb is relatively pest and problem free so if you’ve never grown it before find a neighbour or friend with some plants and divide off a crown or two. It’s easy to grow and well worth the wait!

–Zoe Carafice

Graham has won a bottle of Seasol from Tui Garden Products! Seasol is a seaweed-based plant tonic that has been used by Australian and New Zealand commercial growers and home gardeners for over 30 years.

The naturally occurring growth stimulants in Seasol promote strong root growth, reduce transplant shock, improve germination rates and increase flowering and fruiting capacity.