You’ll see from the grass in the 1st and 3rd pictures above that picture No 1 was taken during the drought of this last summer and the area where the rhubarb is has not been watered. However by now the rhubarb plant has developed very deep roots.
The third photo shows the same rhubarb plant in a more normal summer a couple of years ago.
Rhubarb takes a few years of tlc to really establish, but it’s so worth it.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I have read and followrd all the published rules. I will now try Pinot Noir (well, wait for lunch) that sounds like a good one. If nothing else, it will sooth my troubled brow.
All the we-can-do-it posts are just feeding my angst.
location: Surrey Hills, England, ex-woodland acidic sand. "Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
Different varieties are ready for harvest at different times Maybe try one that's ready earlier or later than the variety you have tried. I grow Fulton's Strawberry Surprise. The first stalks are ready in late April and I pull them until late June/early July
Billericay - Essex
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
I grew rhubarb in my Belgian garden - deep, alkaline loam with plenty of rain. North side of house so no sun at all in winter but plenty in summer. I divided the first plant after 3 or 4 years and ended up with several strong clumps.
Every autumn as they went dormant I'd give them a mulch of garden compost and sometimes horse muck from our neighbours' farm. They were just a few hundred yards away but on sandy soil and even all the horse muck from their riding and livery stables couldn't get rhubarb to grow in their garden.
Fortunately we had plenty to spare as they love the stuff.
Here, we've not had much success despite planting it in the fertile neutral to acid loam we have in our veggie plot. I think it's just too hot and dry too early in the growing season so we're considering making a bog bed for rhubarb. The only variety I can get here is Victoria.
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
I grow Glaskins Perpetual, from seeds years ago, you can harvest a few sticks in the first year, I did have a problem in the hot summer with them trying to flower, I think every one made a flower spike, easily picked off and it think it must have been the heat making it stressed into flowering.
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
How exactly are they failing? Details may fill in the gaps for someone giving a solution.
If they are just shrinking over time, have you dug them up to see if the roots have developed?
We have it down our allotment on sandy, really poor soil, and it was planted between wooden boards (it was inherited from the previous Tennant like that) which give some protection from the strongest sun at the base but it is in the sun all day. It did fine in our drought with little watering. Reading the above posts it seems like they will do well in most soil conditions and in all aspects, which makes me think you may have something in the soil it doesn't like and that perhaps trying it in a pot is the easiest thing to rule that out.
I've read all the things posters have read. I have done all the things successful posters have done. I have visited trials at Wisley. I have bought and tried many different cultivars. But still no success.
In order to prove that I am a trier, I tried the Pinot Noir. I decided not to send the butler down inro the cellar for the Margaux, but had to hand some Chilean Errazurizz with a screw cap (25% reduction at Waitrose). I has seemed to ease the pain!
location: Surrey Hills, England, ex-woodland acidic sand. "Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
@bédé in the first year do not pull any rhubarb. In the second year pull only a few stems and from the third year onwards you should be able to pull as much as you want. If you pull any in the first year it ruins the plants vigour. By leaving it and just making sure you water and feed it you should have success. You also want to grow it somewhere rhubarb hasn’t been grown before. So if you try again don’t plant where you’ve tried it before. Keep any mulch away from the crown to avoid crown rot.
I was interested in your comment about honey fungus on p.1, @bédé. I don't grow rhubarb (OH can't abide it) but had a Rheum palmatum in the area of my front garden where we lost a Sorbus to honey fungus. It grew ok for 2 years, then this year slowly faded away. Not too dry or too wet; no bootlaces or fruiting bodies (- but then there were none visible on the Sorbus either, just an overpowering smell of mushrooms from the broken roots). I'm still suspicious it might be HF though - I believe the rhubarb family are susceptible...
Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
Posts
worth it.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
All the we-can-do-it posts are just feeding my angst.
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
I grow Fulton's Strawberry Surprise. The first stalks are ready in late April and I pull them until late June/early July
Billericay - Essex
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
Every autumn as they went dormant I'd give them a mulch of garden compost and sometimes horse muck from our neighbours' farm. They were just a few hundred yards away but on sandy soil and even all the horse muck from their riding and livery stables couldn't get rhubarb to grow in their garden.
Fortunately we had plenty to spare as they love the stuff.
Here, we've not had much success despite planting it in the fertile neutral to acid loam we have in our veggie plot. I think it's just too hot and dry too early in the growing season so we're considering making a bog bed for rhubarb. The only variety I can get here is Victoria.
If they are just shrinking over time, have you dug them up to see if the roots have developed?
We have it down our allotment on sandy, really poor soil, and it was planted between wooden boards (it was inherited from the previous Tennant like that) which give some protection from the strongest sun at the base but it is in the sun all day. It did fine in our drought with little watering. Reading the above posts it seems like they will do well in most soil conditions and in all aspects, which makes me think you may have something in the soil it doesn't like and that perhaps trying it in a pot is the easiest thing to rule that out.
In order to prove that I am a trier, I tried the Pinot Noir. I decided not to send the butler down inro the cellar for the Margaux, but had to hand some Chilean Errazurizz with a screw cap (25% reduction at Waitrose). I has seemed to ease the pain!
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
My RHS membership number was <5,000, that shows I am no rookie.
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."