Country Living in a Cariboo Valley

Homesteading in BC

What to do With all the Strawberry Runners?

By

Do you grow your own fruit? Growing your own berries isn’t difficult and will be much cheaper than buying fruit from the store.

We’ve had strawberry beds every since we moved here in 2006. We added a lot more composted manure to the strawberry bed this year and it shows!

We have had runners going willy nilly and they are beyond getting out of control.

 

Grow your own organic berries

The strawberry bed sometimes suffers here; we’ve got so much else going on that it’s a bit easy to get overlooked.

As long as we get in there and remove most of the suckers, we’ll end up with nice large fruit.

 

Planting a Strawberry Pot

We’ve been snipping some of the runners for sale at the Farmer’s Market, but we still have a lot here. Jaime’s been busy…

 

Strawberry Pot

planting some of the runners into this large Strawberry Pot!

 

Berries - for your Health!

The pipe standing up in the middle is for watering. It probably won’t take long for the plants in the top tier to hide the pipe.

Strawberry pots like this are fantastic for on the patio or any other small garden space. You can get a lot of strawberries from one of these pots!

Harvesting Rhubarb

By

Graham made our Rhubarb Bed a couple of years ago. We divided some of our existing plants, so we were able to increase the total number of plants we have. We are up to 7 plants now, I think, so we get lots of Rhubarb every year. That’s a great thing, because we love making Rhubarb Wine with our harvests.

 

Rhubarb Bed

 

 

IMG_7057

 

This is the flower stalk coming up. Be sure to cut that off, so you the energy of the plant goes into making even more Rhubarb stalks.

 

 

IMG_7060

 

Cut the leaves off. NEVER feed them to livestock or humans, as they are poisonous. Instead, since the leaves are so nice and large, lay them down over your bed. They will act as a mulch and help keep the weeds down.

Here’s how we have made our Rhubarb Wine in past years – this year we are going to try something different. We would ideally like to have less water in the wine, and more straight Rhubarb juice.

So I have washed the stalks and cut them into 1/2 inch pieces. Then they go into a Ziplock bag and they get weighed. The weight gets written down on the front and all the bags go in the freezer. When it comes time to start making the wine, we will remove the bags and dump the Rhubarb into a large strainer. As it thaws, the juice will run down into a primary container below the strainer. The actual Rhubarb that is left over after draining will go on the compost pile or we will give it to the chickens.

The other day, I was able to get almost 23 pounds of Rhubarb in the freezer. Today’s harvest netted us another 25 pounds in the freezer and we are no where near done. I would not be surprised if we ended up with at least 150 pounds. That’s going to be a lot of wine!

If you would rather bake with the Rhubarb or make jam, take a look at this recipe book.

 

How to Make Rhubarb Wine

By

If you’ve got an abundance of Rhubarb, why not get out your wine making equipment? Here’s how to make Rhubarb Wine.

A glass of Rhubarb wine sits on a table outside
You’ll love this rustic homemade rhubarb wine!

If you grow a lot of rhubarb, consider making some delicious wine with some of your harvest. It’s tasty and easy to make – here’s a foolproof rhubarb wine recipe.

The middle of June is the ideal time to pick the bulk of your Rhubarb if you live in the North. Want to learn how to grow Rhubarb?

A rhubarb plant growing in the garden
This is what rhubarb looks like growing in the garden.

When you pick them, you can either twist the stalk (close to the ground) to snap it off. You are always better to snap them off instead of using a knife to cut them.

Be sure to leave several of the smaller ones on the plant. This way, your Rhubarb plant will continue to grow.

How to Make Rhubarb Wine

Ready to make wine? All you need are a few simple ingredients! Here are the instructions.

When your Rhubarb is ready to be picked, harvest it.

Rhubarb sits in a scale being weighed.
It’s best to keep close measurements during this process so you can easily recreate it once you get everything in the proportions you like best!

Using a kitchen scale, weigh the stalks – you will need 5 pounds rhubarb for every 1 gallon batch of wine (which is about 4.5 litres). This year we ended up with 37 pounds of Rhubarb from those 5 plants!

Clean out a primary fermenter and snap all the stalks many times. You don’t need to cleanly break each stalk into piece.

Just give them a quick snap so the rhubarb is exposed. The more times you can snap each stalk, the better as more surface area is exposed. A rolling pin is a good tool to expose the stalks.

A primary fermenter filled with rhubarb and water.
The rhubarb goes through primary fermentation before anything else.

Snap the stalks into the primary container and pour cold water over to cover them. Now let it sit 3 days and give it a stir every day.

After 3 days, scoop out the rhubarb and leave the water behind. Do NOT mash the rhubarb, as this can lead to a cloudy wine.

Rhubarb juice after being strained from the stalks.
You want to expose the insides of the rhubarb without mashing it, as this can lead to wine that’s cloudy.

 Hold the Rhubarb above the liquid for a minute to let most of the excess liquid drip back into the primary.

Give it a light squeeze to get more juice out but don’t squeeze it too hard. If you have backyard chickens or pigs, they will love this leftover Rhubarb.

Sugar being weighed before adding to Rhubarb wine.
Sugar is necessary for the yeast to produce alcohol! This is where the alcohol content of wine comes from.

Sugar for Home Made Wine

According to the recipe, I had to add 3 lbs of sugar for every 1 gallon (4.5 liters) of liquid. I stirred the sugar really well to get it dissolved.

You may find it easier to make a sugar syrup on the stove as the sugar will completely dissolve before adding to the fermenter. You can also use honey to sweeten wine, but you may need to use a little more than you would sugar.

Something to consider is that rhubarb doesn’t have the natural tannins like grapes do, so you may find it beneficial to add additional ingredients like some pectic enzyme or a tsp yeast nutrient or more. These ingredients can be found online at various homebrewing sources or at your local wine supply store.

This is because grape juice has a more natural balance of things like sugar, water, wild yeast, tannins, and other components that make wine making simple and more hands off. You may have to put in a little more thought with something like rhubarb wine.

For additional flavor, consider adding things like raisins (which can be a good yeast nutrient substitute), lemon rinds, ginger root, or brewed black tea (a good source of tannin powder).

 

Making Rhubarb Wine at Home – Testing Specific Gravity

After you add the sugar, test the specific gravity with the hydrometer. You are looking for hydrometer readings of 10 – 12%.

If it is closer to 10% you may want to add some more sugar. Next add a few Campden tablets (optional).

Rhubarb juice before yeast is added.
I love the color of rhubarb juice.

Pour this liquid into the primary fermenter. Look at the pretty pink!

Adding Yeast when Making Wine

Now, sprinkle 1 packet of wine yeast over the top of the liquid; don’t stir it in, just leave it sitting on top of the liquid in the jug.

Rhubarb wine fermenting in the primary container.
The yeast gets to work eating up sugar and producing alcohol.

 It’s supposed to start foaming, which means the wine is working. It will be foaming for a couple of days and then it will stop.

When it stops, rack it down from the primary fermenter into a carboy or demijohn.

Make sure you don’t let the siphon tube sit at the bottom – you want to leave the musty sediment and pulp behind.

Rack it down again into a clean carboy in a few weeks, then let it sit for 6 months to go through secondary fermentation till it can be bottled. When it comes time to bottle, you’ll want to watch airlocks for bubbles and then siphon into sterilized bottles.

Rhubarb wine being racked down into a carboy.
Here’s how we siphon wine between carboys.

Making Rhubarb Wine at Home – Racking

Whenever you finish racking wine, lift the carboy up onto a table or counter right away. It needs to sit someplace undisturbed. Place it in a large bucket out of the way to keep it safe if that will help.

This way, the sediment will begin to fall to the bottom. That’s exactly what you want. You want your carboy up high, so you don’t have to move it up when it’s time to repeat this process.

A carboy filled with Rhubarb wine.
Be sure you don’t bring any of the residual sediment along when you transfer your wine.

Every time you move the carboy, the sediment at the bottom of the mixture will start to move throughout the liquid again. You want it to settle so the sediment goes down to the bottom again.

Bottling Rhubarb Wine

Before you bottle it, rack it down one last time into another clean carboy. Then, let it sit for another four or five days so any sediment left has a chance to fall to the bottom.

You always want to make sure to leave all the sediment behind. If in doubt, rack it down again carefully.

When it comes to making wine, you simply cannot rack it too many times. Some people will rack the wine four or five times before they bottle.

What you are trying to do is make sure you have no sediment left at the bottom of the container, before racking into the individual bottles.

Be sure your siphon hose does NOT go all the way to the bottom of the carboy. We use a clothespin to help hold the hose at the level we want. If all else fails, you can also strain the wine using a straining bag.

Finished jugs full of pretty Rhubarb wine.
Rhubarb produces a wine that’s beautifully pink!

The finished result – a beautiful pink colour and sweet flavor. It will taste great in a few months. Squirrel some away so you can try a bottle from this batch next year!

Cap them with corks, using a corker and then lay them on their side. Or use wine bottles with screw-on lids. Cheers! Enjoy your Rhubarb Wine!

 

More Homemade Wine Recipes

Rhubarb wine in two glasses on a table
Once you learn how to make your own wine, you won’t be able to get enough!

 

Raspberries and Strawberries

By

With the gardens pretty much planted (for which I am so very glad) I am turning my attention to weeding. First up, the Berries.

Here’s the Raspberry patch. Right now I have three rows of plants that sorely needed to be weeded.

Lots of weeds and lots of Raspberry suckers. I am Ruthless when it comes to weeding the Raspberry patch and you should be to. If you aren’t ruthless, you will end up with Raspberry suckers all over your patch.

Since I want to keep my Berry plants in rows, I go thru and pull out Any sucker that is not in the row. Remember that Raspberries will fruit on last years wood, so don’t pull all the suckers out. I just like to keep mine confined.

I want more than 3 rows, so I will let some suckers on the far end stay. When I pull up suckers from the other rows, if they come out nicely with roots, I will plant them in that far row. Over time, I should be able to get about 5 or 6 rows of Raspberries in here.

Now the Raspberry patch is all weeded – all I need to do now is top dress the patch with some composted manure.

I got a trailer full of composted manure and top dressed all the Strawberry plants. I had done a good weeding job before the top dressing. The Strawberry beds should be fine now until they start sending out their baby plants, then I will need to get back in there.

The Strawberry plants are now starting to flower. It should only be a few weeks before the fruit can be picked. We love Strawberries and eat a lot of them. I also freeze some for making pies in the Winter.

Privacy Policy

Read about our Privacy Policy

Disclosure

Please note that some of this site’s links are affiliate links, and CountryLivinginaCaribooValley.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. At NO ADDITIONAL COST TO YOU, I will earn a small commission, if you purchase them. I recommend them as they are good products.