It's getting cooler and I know my rhubarb will be dying back soon. There's some nice stalks on the plants now and I'm wondering if I could pick all the stalks off the plant now before the plant dies back? Does anyone have any experience with rhubarb?
rhubarb
You could certainly harvest some of the stalks, but I wouldn't take them all. This is bonus time for the plant to pull in all the good it can. We often mow ours off after the first harvest and then get a second harvest now, but I never pull all of the stalks.
Kathleen is right. The stalks will help the plant draw nutrients to the roots for next season. When I lived in Maine we used to harvest a good part of the stalks before frost and chop them and freeze them! Fresh rhubarb for pies and such all winter long.
I should be having a frost any day now. I doesn't look like the roots are sending up any new leaves which makes me wonder if it would truly do any harm to harvest all or maybe 90% of the stalks before they become ruined. Should I wait until a day or two before a frost to harvest? Rhubarb is so tasty, especially as a jam that I hate to see it wasted.
I would probably harvest the majority of it now, leaving just a few stalks... Any new growth would be killed by the frost most likely anyway and the rhubarb will be going into dormancy for the winter. Make your jam and freeze some for strawberry-rhubarb pie - mmm mmm good!