Rhubarb (rheum) Plants / Crowns Bare Root

Order your Rhubarb Crowns 

Rhubarb is a hardy perennial with large pink, green, or red leaf stalks that are used for desserts like pies,  and crumbles.  Stems usually picked in the spring.  The flavour of varieties of rhubarb will vary in sweetness depending on the age of the stalks.  Rhubarb is actually a vegetable, but the thick stalks are treated more like a fruit even though they may be tart to taste.

There are two crops of rhubarb, early and main crop. 

• Early crops of rhubarb arrive early in the year and are forced grown under pots.  Stalks of early rhubarb are pink with pale green leaves and more delicately flavoured.
• Rhubarb known as ‘main crop’ are usually grown outdoors, arrives in spring with deep red tinged stalks and light green leaves.  They usually have a more intense flavour. 
• Rhubarb can be grown from seed, but it is more common to plant dormant crowns during the months of November to March.

ScotPlants Direct offer two varieties of bareroot rhubarb crowns during the dormant period from November to March:

• Timperley Early:  Thick stems  with early high yields.  Bred for forcing and does great outside, but has even better colour when forced.
• Victoria:  One of the Heirloom varieties, and thought of as the "gold"standard of rhubarb.  Victoria has large, fat stems, bright red skin, lack of stringiness and a tart, apple-gooseberry flavour with a hint of lemon or grapefruit (depending on your soil).