How to Plant and Grow Rhubarb

[Music] good day welcome to I cultivat my name's Steve today we're going to be looking at that oldtime favorite perennial rhubarb this is my rhubarb crop as a perennial I have it growing in an area that is away from my bed rotation area because rhubarb is a plant that can go for anywhere from 10 to 20 years so it's not something that you're going to be rotating around with your other vegetables it is a perennial plant that you can grow from either seed seedling or in fact buy crowns that you can then plant I've got rhubarb here that I've grown from both seedling and crowns this one over here which you can see with the rich red stalks is an example of one which I've grown from a crown whereas the one directly behind me here is an example of one which I've grown from SE seedling irrespective of whether you grow R bub from seed seedling or crown it is in fact a plant that likes rich soil well- drained soil soil that is well manured and you can see in here I've actually got quite a bit of manure and I I like cow manure and uh horse manure to use with most of my my plantings when planting rhubarb you need to be very mindful of the sort of conditions that you're planting it in too it's not a plant that likes very hot weather in fact it produces best in conditions that are quite cool however it will tolerate reasonably warm weather and as long as you look after it and make sure that it receives adequate moisture you should have some success when harvesting rhubarb it's very important to remember not to cut the stalk it's important that what you do is you hold firmly at the base of the stalk twist and [Music] pull if you do cut the stalk what you can leave is an area that can collect water and one of the few things that rubab is in fact susceptible to is Crown rot so you want to avoid allowing water to collect around the crown at all costs so remember don't cut the stalk make sure that you pull the stalk from the from the crown it is very important to remember that you cannot eat the leaf the leaf is very high in oxalic acid and eating too much oxalic acid can in fact make you sick the best thing that you can do with this Leaf is to Simply add it to your compost don't even feed it to your chickens because your chickens too much exilic acid is not good for them either so once you have trimmed your particular rhubarb stalk simply remove the leaf remove down the bottom and there's your beautiful rhubarb stalk ready for cooking in your particular recipe so the main things to remember about this beautiful perennial vegetable is that you need to make sure that you keep it away from extreme heat you need to make sure that it has sufficient moisture although it will tolerate a little bit of dry and the best soil conditions for it to grow in is slightly acidic soil soil that is well drained and sore that is well manured can I encourage you to be a part of the conversation on the I cultivate YouTube channel and also please go to our website I cultivate Donnet and become a part of the community thanks for watching [Music]