When rhubarb blooms.
Last summer a local resident of my town responded to an ad I placed on Freecycle looking for a rhubarb cutting. This year the plant is doing spectacularly, and although I didn’t harvest any rhubarb this season, the dramatic plant is a welcome addition to my vegetable garden.
Something unexpected has happened, however: the plant has bloomed!
My instinct is to cut the bloom off, but I thought I’d consult some of my trusted gardening books to see what should be done.
How to Grow Vegetables & Fruits by the Organic Method (1961, edited by J.I. Rodale and Staff, page 500): “Flower stalks should be removed as soon as they develop. They are unlikely to develop seeds, but if they do, they will take more of the plant’s vigor than the dubious offspring are worth.” Dubious offspring!
Grow Vegetables (2008, Alan Buckingham, page 270): “Cut off any stems that go to flower and any leaves that turn yellow and die.”
The Cook’s Garden (2003, edited by Liz Primeau, page 30): “The flower stalks are striking additions to vegetable plots or perennial beds. But for tender rhubarb, remove flower stalks as they appear.”
That settles it. Now where are my garden clippers?
(Do you consider rhubarb to be a fruit or a vegetable?)
Off the top of my head, i will say that rhubarb is a true vegetable since it doesn’t produce fruit. I say this because technically, any fruit that has the seeds inside is a fruit, a distinction that was erased when the U.S. Congress, in response to the United Banana Company’s lobbying, reclassified tomatoes and such as vegetables purely for political reasons (something to do with the tax on exporting/importing fruits vs. vegetables).
Someday I will research this more carefully as it promises to be an interesting story.
David in Kansas’s last blog post..A definite lack of pollinators