Did you know rhubarb is actually a vegetable, not a fruit? I’m not sure why, but there you go. Perhaps because it looks so much like celery despite being great in a sweet pie or crumble.

Anyhow, I’ve wanted to grow some in the garden for the last couple of years and had a spot marked out along one side of the chicken enclosure, far enough away from the sides of their compound to stop them nibbling at the poisonous leaves. When we saw Wilkinson was selling rhubarb crowns at £1.98 a go, then, it was too good an offer to pass up. We bought two.

Rhubarb can be a bit temperamental. It likes rich soil, so benefits from compost and rotted manure. It likes a lot of moisture, and well-drained soil. It likes sun, but not too much heat. Picking the right spot isn’t exactly easy, and is complicated by the fact that when you’ve got rhubarb in the garden it’s pretty much there for life, so you don’t want to put it anywhere that’s going to encroach on your other crops.

All things considered, then, the patch of earth we’d originally earmarked still looked the best choice as it’s contained on three sides.

Empty rhubarb bed

Rhubarb crowns are small when you first get them, but they grow a lot, so you should allow for at least 90cm between each one. That meant we had room for just two, which should be enough for the two of us.

Tearing into our rhubarb packs we found a baking potato-sized crown in each one. They are like light lumps of wood with a small pink growth. Here’s one of ours, sitting in the bag of compost in which it was sold:

Rhubarb crown

They don’t need to be planted deep, so we dug a shallow hole for each one, lined it with some good quality compost and settled the crown on top of it. We filled it up with a mix of the original soil we had removed and some more compost, and watered them in well.

That’s all there is to it, really. One of our crowns – the one above – had a small piece of rhubarb growing out of it, so we planted it with that protruding from the ground like a little triffid. The other one’s first shoot was growing along its length, rather than upwards, so we have planted it to the same depth and will let it find its own way up.

Newly-planted rhubarb

All we need to do now is wait. It will take a year at least to get itself established, so we won’t be taking any fruit from it this summer. Next year, though, we have home-grown rhubarb crumbles to look forward to. The thought of it is making me want some right now.

Related posts:

1. The rhubarb is shooting
2. A surprise showing from the ‘dead’ rhubarb
3. Our rhubarb has made it through the winter