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Hows your rhubarb?

fryup

My 30 yr old rhubarb patch has never let me down...but..this year for some reason its poor, stalks are either long & skinny or short & chunky..and the leaves don't look the healthiest either?

Has it come to an end? should i just dig them up and plant new plants?

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magicbastarder

ours is fine so far, we've had a cool enough spell so it's not quite romping away.
how often do you lift and split the crowns?

my3cents

fryup wrote: »

My 30 yr old rhubarb patch has never let me down...but..this year for some reason its poor, stalks are either long & skinny or short & chunky..and the leaves don't look the healthiest either?

Has it come to an end? should i just dig them up and plant new plants?

Its almost impossible to kill. Its one of those plants that hangs on for so long it can be used to indicate where there was an old garden even if the house has fallen down.

Probably a bit late but you can dig up a chunk of root and replant it and it should grow on.

Maybe yours is poor because of the funny season we have had this year hot then cold weather, but rhubarb grows fine in areas with some nasty winters

No harm in getting new stock of a named variety.

Always Tired

Good chat up line, I'm stealing it

my3cents

Always Tired wrote: »

Good chat up line, I'm stealing it

Like "whats long and pink and goes into tarts"

smacl

Mine's doing well though really should have harvested a bit more by now.

fleet

My Timperley Early was great in Feb/March.
Perfect stalk lenght, thickness ans colour. I took one harvest off it.

The last two months have been woeful for both the Timperley and the Holsteiner though. Limp, weedy effort; I'm literally thinning it out to try improve it, then throwing out the thinning as they're not worth my time coking wirh.

_Brian

Terrible.
The chickens savages the leaves and it’s struggling. I need to net around it to keep them off.

gozunda

Make sure to feed with well rotted (composted min. six months) horse manure. Plus the ground has gone very dry at a time when the plant needs lots of moisture. Water using rainwater if possible.

my3cents

I'd be very careful of that rhubarb if I were you - its probably been poisoned by your dentist

scarepanda

If you don't have horse manure, what's the best feed for a rhurbarb plant?

Mine was sowed last year, so this year is the first year I can harvest it and it's in a similar state to the OP. I was just chalking up its sorry looking state to it being a new plant. I have been watering it as it's just outside the greenhouse. However my mam was saying yesterday that a neighbours rhubarb patch is doing very badly, not sure if she even has any plants that are doing anything. She usually has an abundance of rhurbarb that she ends up giving away loads.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Huge and very sweet this year. Lots harvested already.

They need refreshing every now and again.

gozunda

scarepanda wrote: »

If you don't have horse manure, what's the best feed for a rhurbarb plant?

Mine was sowed last year, so this year is the first year I can harvest it and it's in a similar state to the OP. I was just chalking up its sorry looking state to it being a new plant. I have been watering it as it's just outside the greenhouse. However my mam was saying yesterday that a neighbours rhubarb patch is doing very badly, not sure if she even has any plants that are doing anything. She usually has an abundance of rhurbarb that she ends up giving away loads.

Also ordinary farmyard manure - just make sure its well rotted down. Or even home made garden compost. It feeds the plant but also helps the soil retain moisture. If the plants are young and looking poorly - I'd suggest not harvesting the leaves until next year. The plant needs the leaves to build up the root system.

scarepanda

gozunda wrote:

Also ordinary farmyard manure - just make sure its well rotted down. Or even home made garden compost. It feeds the plant but also helps the soil retain moisture. If the plants are young and looking poorly - I'd suggest not harvesting the leaves until next year. The plant needs the leaves to build up the root system.

I would have access to farmyard manure, but it would be fresh stuff at the moment. No home made compost either. Would a liquid feed/the chicken manure pellets be any good at this moment in time?

The plants were planted just over a year ago. But I'll leave harvesting any more till next year - I only took my first harvest off it yesterday.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Generally best to not crop the first year and not after July for the next few years after that. Copping is removing the leaves needed to fuel the plant.

worker bee

Weird, same problem here.
all v short stalks.
I was blaming the new additions to the garden (chickens) as they have shredded my raspberries but maybe I'm wrong.

They were pecking at the new shoots and I was worried as the leaves are poison so I covered it up with a bucket until the leaves got hardier. They are leaving the dark green leaves alone now so it's out in the sunshine again but is very stubby.

scarepanda

Mohammad Chilly Hillbilly wrote:

Generally best to not crop the first year and not after July for the next few years after that. Copping is removing the leaves needed to fuel the plant.

Oh right. I thought I'd be able to start using some of it this year! Learn something new every day - Cheers!

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

scarepanda wrote: »

Oh right. I thought I'd be able to start using some of it this year! Learn something new every day - Cheers!

You can use it but don't expect much in future years. The plant needs to grow.

tcif

Any way to tell the varieties apart? I have 4 plants in row and it's literally a tale of two halves - two are thriving and two are very poor this year, limp stalks, very little growth etc. Two are Timperley Earley and two are Livingstone but (and this is my bad!) I'm not sure which is which. Or why out of 4 plants in a row (so identical food/light/water/soil conditions etc.) two are doing so well and two look like they're on the way out. I'd love to know which two are doing well as I'm thinking of extending the bed in the autumn and wondering what variety to go for.

tampopo

scarepanda wrote: »

I would have access to farmyard manure, but it would be fresh stuff at the moment. No home made compost either. Would a liquid feed/the chicken manure pellets be any good at this moment in time?

The plants were planted just over a year ago. But I'll leave harvesting any more till next year - I only took my first harvest off it yesterday.

Not last autumn, but in previous years I've layered my rhubarb with 3" to 4" of leaf mould (fallen leaves, really) and 3" to 4" of horse manure on top. Leave it for the winter. It's a slow plant to get going, but once it's in, it'll be grand.

macraignil

High nutrient ground is definitely good for rhubarb. I planted some from my parent's garden when I moved to a new house about five years ago. The spot I picked was after being built up with loads of horse manure by the girlfriends Da who had planted some roses around the same spot. The plants took off better than I have ever seen rhubarb grow and are doing good again this year. It is supposed to be important to stop harvesting by September to allow the plant build up energy for the following spring. I make a habit of covering the old crowns with a layer of old horse bedding/manure over winter and they are usually starting to break through this to regrow by late winter. They might have been a bit slower this year to get growing properly but we have had some cold nights up to very recently which might explain this.

This year my parents needed to get some rhubarb again as they had left theirs get overgrown and I made a video clip of dividing one of mine which is said to be good for the plants. My intention was to lift the crown to divide it but the crown had got too big for this and in the end just slicing pieces with a shoot bud off with a spade worked fine and it is getting established well back at my parents' house and in the garden across the road from where I am living. I will probably have to call back to keep it weeded and drop off some manure. It is usually fine to harvest after one year settling in but I always think some common sense needs to be applied and to only harvest a portion of the stems and leave enough for the plant to continue growing strongly is essential if you want to continue to harvest more.

fryup

should i use plant food to revive it? how about chicken manure pellets?

macraignil

fryup wrote: »

should i use plant food to revive it? how about chicken manure pellets?

The time I apply organic material/fertiliser to rhubarb is in winter and that allows time for it to all break down and the nutrients be available for new growth in the spring. Not tried giving rhubarb fertiliser at this time of year myself but it probably would work to give it some help. If you have not divided the rhubarb in 30 years it might also be worth dividing some this winter and planting it a new bed of well manured ground. I read somewhere that it benefits from being divided every few years.

fryup

here's a sample picture of my rhubarb (don't snigger) it seems to have an infection of some kind...what'd ya think..

my3cents

Looks more like an environmental (cold, wet, dry, starved etc) problem than a disease?

gozunda

scarepanda wrote: »

Oh right. I thought I'd be able to start using some of it this year! Learn something new every day - Cheers!

No worries. Once established in a few years - a few stools of rhubarb will produce more than you can generally use

Holy Diver

Mine is very poor this year also. It was flying until the storm there about a month or so ago and hasn’t been the same since.

fryup

ignore my first pic, this one is a more accurate image of the state of my rhubarb...

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

That looks like a tired and worn out plant to me. When was it last dug up and divided?

fryup

^^^^^^^^^^^

tbh i can't remember

byhookorbycrook

Mine was flying but late frost really hit it. For chicken pellets,we put them in water and then use the liquid to feed plants.