Gardeners have plenty to do in in the middle of summer as it is now peak harvesting season, but you may be delighted to hear that that is one crop you do not need to worry about. Mertie Mae, a gardening expert and founder of Horticulture Talk is urging gardeners to stop harvesting their rhubarb in July and leave the plant alone if you want it to keep growing.
She said: “Allowing the plant to grow for the rest of the summer will give it the sugars and nutrients needed to get it through the winter and allow it to produce well the next year.” Rhubarb will still continue to grow their stalks in summer but if you keep harvesting it the plant will not have enough time to recover before the cold weather arrives in autumn.
Rhubarb grows back each year due to a plant component called rhizomes, which stores sugars an nutrient that the plant needs to survive cold temperatures to regrow in spring.
The stalks on rhubarb support the leaves for photosynthesis, and if you leave it alone now, it will start to convert energy into more sugar and nutrients so it can stay alive in winter.
If you keep picking the rhubarb stalks then the plant will have a lot less energy, which will stress it out and disrupt its natural growing cycle.
It is less likely to be able to grow stalks next year, and any food it does produce will be thin, small and even bitter. In some cases, the plant will also be far too weak to survive winter, and it might not grow back next spring.
July also tends to be a very dry month for plants, which stresses rhubarb out, and any stalks it is growing at this time of year will not be as juicy or as tasty as they once were.
Mertie Mae said: “The lower amount of available water and the lower amount of sugar (because the reserve from the previous year has been used in spring) make the stalks thin and of a poorer quality.”
If you want to keep your rhubarb healthy then all you need to do is leave it intact and let it grow out naturally.
Keep removing any flowers from the rhubarb if you spot any as this can direct energy away from the roots and stop the plant from storing its reserves for winter.
Make sure to also keep watering it at least once a week and when the soil is dry as it needs all the help it can get during the hot sunny months.
Leaving rhubarb alone to die back and let it care for itself will help you have a thriving plant next spring which will be able to produce thick red stalks for you to enjoy.