Mike MacEacheran
A notoriously fickle vegetable to harvest, Yorkshire forced rhubarb is anything but easy to grow. It thrives in the county’s cold winters, but if the soil is too wet, it can’t be planted. If the temperature is too hot, it won’t grow; and 10 or more frosts are needed before a farmer can even think about forcing it. Only then can horticulturalists remove the heavy roots from the field, then clean and replant them inside the forcing sheds where photosynthesis is limited, encouraging glucose stored in the roots to stimulate growth. It demands patience, expertise and good fortune, and, ultimately, it is engineered for maximum taste: once deprived of light, the vegetable is forced to use the energy stored in its roots, making it far sweeter than the normal variety.
To learn more, I visited Vicky Whiteley of Whiteley’s Farm, which produces around 12 acres of forced rhubarb annually in the nearby town of Pudsey. Using her ‘rhubarb map’ to work out which crop grows in which field, she introduced me to numerous varieties – Stockbridge Arrow, Harbinger, Timperley, Dawes, Canada Red, Strawberry, Cawood Delight, Red Champagne, and Victoria and Albert. “Rhubarb is in our blood and there’s no doubt Yorkshire is the rhubarb capital of the world,” she said. “But whatever price you get, remember it took three years to get these precious few weeks of growth.”
Mike MacEacheran
For a simple vegetable, rhubarb has come a long way since it was discovered growing wild on the banks of the River Volga. Cultivated from Siberia to China as far back as 2700 BC, where it was used for its healing properties, it was transported along the Silk Road to Italy in the 13th Century by Marco Polo. It once commanded three times the price of opium and saffron, and was weighed against gold.