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extra plants to another gardener.

Ahhhh Now For The Reward
The reward for your labor is the pink and green stalks of rhubarb. These can be harvested when they are thicker than a pencil by pulling them out and up from the plant. They will snap out of the plant. It is a good idea to take the larger outer stalks and leave the central stalks undisturbed. There is often a little tiny stalk and leave or two in the middle that you can leave to grow and feed the plant along with a couple of the bigger leaves.

If the plant starts to send up a central seed bearing stalk it is a wise thing to cut this down . The plant is not propagated through seeds and the plant will stop producing stalks if you let it go to seed. Otherwise you can havest stalks several times in the early summer before the plant must be left to strength itself. It will stop sending up new stalks when it is time to stop harvesting.

How To Use It
The plant is also called pieplant in old books. It was traditionally used to make pies and sauces. It also makes a nice jam which thickens nicely. It is a tart fruit so does require quite a bit of sugar added. Sometimes it is combined with less tart fruits or juices when used to make desserts,sauces,or jams. When I was a kid a stalk of raw rhubarb was sometimes enjoyed by dipping the end in sugar and then chewing it off repeatedly.

Rhubarb is fairly easy to grow and gives a rich reward full of natural vitamins and lots of flavor. It needs only a place to spread it's roots,and wave it's leaves in the sun with a nice long rest in the winter. It's a nice plant to include on the edge of any vegetable garden and will repay you in years of tart fruit in exchange for just a little fertilizer and some cultivation. Any general cookbook has recipes for putting your harvest to use in desserts and sauces or you can try eating some stalks the old fashioned way with a little bowl of sugar to dip it in. It will certainly wake up your taste buds!

Learn more about this author, Candace Williams.
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