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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.
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.
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.