When I was young my grandmother used to make some wonderful pies using rhubarb she grew at the end of her lovely garden and I remember that she also used the juice of this to clean out her saucepans every now and again, especially after she had made jam.

I have always grown rhubarb in a corner of my garden but a few years ago decided to plant some in my vegetable patch in one of my raised beds and the results were superb. I planted these in November by dividing a plant I had lifted from the garden area and following an old method I had left the crown on top of the soil so that it was exposed to a hard frost before I split it.

Rhubarb does not like shade so I planted it in a really sunny position with lots of my specially made up compost which is a mixture of horse dung and chicken droppings which are all well rotted down. I made sure that my plants had plenty of room around them and the following summer I did harvest some sticks in August and the plants did not suffer at all, in fact the following year the crop was pretty good and by the second year it was amazing.

The trick to growing rhubarb successfully is to make sure it gets plenty of light and in the winter to keep the plants fairly dry. However, during the summer these need to be kept nice and moist. If you place a covering of leaves around them during the winter but remove this in February and then in April place some good compost around them, you will find this helps to keep the soil moist as the weather warms up. The thing to remember is to make sure the soil is very damp before you add any summer mulch and if the weather is very dry, to keep watering your plants.

Another thing I always do is feed my rhubarb nitrogen because it is a leaf crop and even though I do use a good summer mulch made up of my farm yard manure, I think my plants do need that little bit extra and so far this has paid off handsomely.