Rhubarb
As Ken McMullen travels Ontario’s countryside, rhubarb tells him where the old farmhouses once stood. “Even when the houses are burned down and the foundations are gone, 10 to 15 years later you’ll see the outline of the original garden by where the rhubarb is,” he says. “It just keeps coming back no matter what.”
Rhubarb and asparagus are the only perennial vegetables, and, according to McMullen, it isn’t unusual for the red, pucker-inducing plant to return for 30 or even 50 years. So if your grandmother planted it in her backyard, “you’ve got lots of rhubarb and are usually giving it away to the neighbors,” McMullen chuckles.
McMullen bought his southwestern Ontario farm 20 years ago, and though he hasn’t planted rhubarb since then, he still reaps 75 to 100 stalks, which resemble celery, each year. The giant-leafed plant — picture cabana-boy palm leaves — multiplies sideways and develops an enormous root.
McMullen grows eight to 10 varieties each of 36 fruit and vegetable crops on his 50-acre farm, but only devotes an eighth of an acre to rhubarb. “I’ve found that I was selling plants to my customers when I started out,” he says, “and now their rhubarb is growing so well that when I try to sell them fresh rhubarb in the spring they’re trying to sell it back to me.”
Once it’s planted, “it does all the work itself,” he says. Even better, the region’s cold winters and moist springs provide ideal growing conditions. Plus, “We get good sunshine, and that helps,” says McMullen, “but being a broad-leaf plant, it can even take partial shade.”
Adding to rhubarb’s low maintenance, pesticides are unnecessary since only one or two bug species — one being the snout beetle — feast on it. They usually drill into the stem late in the season, “so if you haven’t harvested it by then,” says McMullen, “you shouldn’t be harvesting it anyway.” Rhubarb season runs from April through September, but spring stalks are the juiciest, making right now the best time for enjoying rhubarb.
Story:
Miranda Miller
May/June 2010