Rhubarb - advice for newbie gardener

[Startingagainandagain]

The previous owners of my new house left rhubarb plants in the garden and I am thinking of harvesting some of it.

Any advice on whether this is a suitable time to harvest and any suggestions on easy ways to cook it?

I am new to gardening and this is my first spring in this house/garden :).

Where in the country are you? Mine only just have tips starting to poke through, I can’t believe you have stalks already! I can’t wait for my crumble.

The stalks should be about a foot long and the leaves quite big. Best eat the thinnest stalks. You just tug the stems sharply to pull them off the base. Mine is nowhere near ready yet.

I cook mine in the oven usually, at 120 deg C for at least half an hour with 12% in weight sugar and a bit of orange rind. That keeps the texture.

There are different varieties - the one I have is red, so is red when cooked, and it's flavourful but a friend has one that is a bit duller in flavour, and cooks brown/khaki.

Mine is huge and I am in Scotland. We are having rhubarb crumble this evening. Just keep cutting it and using it. It keeps regenerating.

Also watching for advice

I have stalks already and a large flower thing in the middle, am I supposed to cut the flower off? I planted it last spring

My rhubarb patch.

I am in Kent, by the sea :).

The stalks are huge already. Similar to @ApolloandDaphne's...

I think the sea has a big part to play as we are by the sea too. We had a garden designer sort out garden past year and she had complete rhubarb envy. She couldn't get it to grow like we did in her city garden.

Cut any flowering spikes off . Usually means plant is stressed. Mulch it and water.

I've been harvesting a couple of weeks now. Cheshire. My rhubarb is always early and vigorous though on the allotment.

@KnittingOnEmpty - thanks. Probably needed water, in not in uk as it’s been really dry this winter. But has started raining the last week or two so it’s been well watered recently. Il cut it off this week

Stop cutting around the end of June so the plant has time to build up for next year.

it freezes well.

It’s quite acid, and old advice is to have something milky with it - custard or yogurt.

A Sweet Cicely leaf cooked with it reduces the need for sugar.

@Startingagainandagain what a fabulous thing to inherit from the previous owner! I had the same when we moved house, but managed to kill it in the first year. I found out too late that you need to pull stems instead of cutting, and leave some stems on the plant.

To update everyone I made my first rhubarb stew yesterday (rhubarb, sugar, orange zest and juice) and loved it!

I made enough to have some more today with some porridge.

@HazelTheGreenWitch indeed I thankfully watched a YouTube video about harvesting and cooking rhubarb before I did anything yesterday and they advised to pull the stems and leave some on as well in the video :).

Sorry for thread hijacking, but can you harvest rhubarb once it is flowering? We have a huge amount of it that was somewhat undiscovered at the end of the garden...

You can.

'Pick' and discard the flower stalk as soon as you can, as it stresses the plant unnecessarily. And just pick as normal, ie if it's healthy looking and the plant can cope with having bits pulled off. It it's looking really poorly or weedy then let it recover a bit.

@TheSpottedZebra thank you!

My rhubarb has been in a year now and is prolific, Rhubarb rules say don't harvest for the first year which I'm happy to do, but does that just mean having loads of rotting stalks and foliage lying on the ground?

Very, very jealous

Well, you can pick them up and put them on the compost heap once the plant has finished with them. But what it means for most of the year is lots of big healthy leaves