Farm1 wrote:
"Mike Lyle" wrote in message
[...]
you can't really
afford to offer stems with green on them for sale.

I have bought some with green on the upper part of the stems and I'll
quite happily pick my own that way too.

A small producer of
anything, whether rhubarb or cars, has to aim up-market. The UK
commercial boys grow the crowns outdoors, and then bring them on to
cropping in dark sheds -- in which it's said you can actually hear
them
grow! (I think the sound is of the buds breaking their papery
covering.)

I must admit that when I've seen articles on the Yorkshire??? rhubarb
houses, I've always been quite astounded at the investment. Rhubarb
is such an easy plant to grow that I've always wondered why they
bother. I can't really imagine that growing rhubarb which is a
delightful foodstuff could be all that mush improved by growing it
indoors. Either I just don't get it or there must be some
climate/location differences involved. A friend has told me that
forced rhubarb is worth trying so I've give it a go next spring but it
had better be knock your socks off better or I won't bother to do it
more than once.

Yes, most of the UK growers are in Yorks. Passing Wakefield on the
M'way you see fields of it, which for some reason I always find
amusing. It isn't so much about climate or temp, as rhubarb is a cool
temperate crop -- they even grow it in the Faroes -- it really is
mainly about the darkness, so they get pure pink tender stems.

The only times I've bothered to try the darkness treatment I've used
those square black 25-litre dairy hypochlorite "drums" with the bottom
sawn off. (I've lost count of the number of ways to use those things:
sawn in half lengthways for pig troughs, crossways for tomato tubs,
floats for carnival rafts, and so on and on.)

--
Mike.