How can you make rhubarb grow earlier? Mar 19 Guided Work Party

By Angela Hoy

Sign up to join a guided work party here! No experience necessary and all are welcome.

We had an enthusiastic group of gardeners today who helped us move and replant the strawberries from the path between the blueberries, stir the compost and the weeds bin, and remove unwanted feverfew plants from around the garden.

Over in the Kids Garden, we also removed a lot of weeds.

The rhubarb has started to come up in the berry patch, so we are trying to force it by depriving it of light, covering it with spare black bins — a popular way of encouraging early rhubarb in the UK.

It’s time to tidy up and divide the strawberries! Carefully remove all the dead foliage and snip off the connection between the mother plant and the new baby plants, then dig up and replant, with the addition of some compost.

You can probably discard the oldest plants with the very thick roots as these will have lost their vigour after two to three years, and replace with the newer ones. Make sure each plant has a good root system in place before severing from the mother plant.

Matured compost ready for the replanted strawberries.