Happy New Year! How to force rhubarb for an early crop

Happy New Year from the Empty Common Community Garden! Our coordinator Charlotte has sent in this update accompanied by beautiful photos. This year we did not have snow, aside a brief spell in December that was melted before lunchtime, the weather has been cold, reaching freezing temperatures on some nights and milder than usual on some days. 

We have just covered two of our rhubarb plants for force them into producing an early crop. We found two old metal dustbins with rotten bottoms in a skip a few years ago but no lids so have been covering the bins with bits of plywood. Yesterday, while walking along the towpath, I did a double take - there, by the river Cam, were the two lids we needed. 

Although thrilled to find these, I did think it was a sad indictment of how we live, the lids were there because of a change in children's behaviour from fishing with nets and rods for fish to magnet fishing for rubbish. You can buy beautiful terracotta pots with lids but these are super expensive and we think our rustic rubbish bins, which were once rubbish themselves look nice too.

Forcing rhubarb isn't a natural process and it is a little mean on the plant so we are only forcing two of our many plants and give them a few years off in between. Any rhubarb can be forced, but some varieties such as "Victoria" and "Stockbridge Arrow" have been bred especially with forcing in mind. Other varieties to seek out are those with "Early" in the name, such as "Timperley Early". We don't know most of the varieties we have as they have been divided from others' plants, but we do have a late rhubarb that we have never forced called "Livingstone", which is great as we can start picking those when our other plants need a rest.