The Pink Promise Of Spring

FOR some, it’s snowdrops; for others, wild garlic.

- Mark Diacono

For me, I know the corner to spring will have truly been turned with the first mouthful of homegrown rhubarb. That vivid pink of forced rhubarb seems to be pulled from winter’s snooze by the return of the dawn chorus and the lengthening days.

Rhubarb gives two very distinct harvests: the deliciously sour stalks of summer into early autumn and these paler vibrant-pink forced stems that cheer late winter into spring. I wouldn’t be without either. The latter is rightly expensive to buy—the process of lifting the dormant crowns, taking them indoors to dark warmth to be coaxed into tender, sweet productivity and harvested by candlelight is a specialised and costly business. However, it is one that’s easy to replicate in your own garden.

Ceramic forcers that exclude light and create a microclimate are widely available, but I’ve used a large plant pot and an upturned rubbish bin to great effect—the idea is to create a warm environment that fools the plant into thinking it’s late spring. The absence of light prevents photosynthesis. Instead, the plant uses its own starches to drive growth, resulting in the characteristic pale, vivid stems and that characteristic sweetness as the starches are converted to sugar. Manure heaped around the base of the forcer raises the temperature and speeds things along.