Gardening tips for November: Plant rhubarb
Increasingly popular, picking the right cultivar is important, and prepare your ground well before you plant your rhubarb


Rhubarb is on the rise, as you may have noticed, and not before time, too. Make sure you get a tasty cultivar in the first place, such as Cawood Delight or Stockbridge Arrow, and prepare the ground thoroughly. As with all permanent crops, search out all trace of perennial weeds. Dig thoroughly, incorporating liberal quantities of organic matter: plenty of well-rotted, straw-based horse manure, if you can get it. Whatever it is, the more, the merrier. Rhubarb is the proverbial gross feeder, a big herbaceous perennial which, dwelling in riches, rewards its owner with beauty and flavour.
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Country Life is unlike any other magazine: the only glossy weekly on the newsstand and the only magazine that has been guest-edited by His Majesty The King not once, but twice. It is a celebration of modern rural life and all its diverse joys and pleasures — that was first published in Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee year. Our eclectic mixture of witty and informative content — from the most up-to-date property news and commentary and a coveted glimpse inside some of the UK's best houses and gardens, to gardening, the arts and interior design, written by experts in their field — still cannot be found in print or online, anywhere else.
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