Hi big brown horse! :happy_flower
Yes, leave it in the ground. in fact you start to blanch from the first moment you see a nobble above the ground. At that point dump a pile of well-rotted compost on top & some straw if you have it but I have used shredded newspaper, water it if it's dry then upturn a large trash bin over the top (no holes in it & it needs to be really much larger than the plant). Then leave it for about a month before you start peeking. The thing with rhubarb is not to pick the whole plant just a few sticks at a time -- that way the plant will go on producing for months. If it starts to flower cut that stalk off , don't try to eat that one it.s not good. If you leave the flower spike on the plant will stop producing new leaf stalks.
Once you have used one plant to blanch for early rhubarb let it rest a year before you do it again. But you can still take off & eat the stalks from it as it ripens in it's normal cycle. So basically you can get by with 2 plants (they get huge 5-6ft across); just blanch each one on alternate years.
There is a small area in the North of England called The Rhubarb Triangle where they take the rhubarb crowns from the fields into some caves to blanch them gradually by candle light. These growers provide all the early stuff sold in the supermarkets etc; it sells for good money as it's so sweet a lovely colour. The funny thing is that in the caves you can actually hear it growing -- a soft creaking noise -- it's eerie!! They show film of it every year on TV when it comes into season.
It is also easy to take root cutting of it in the late fall/early winter. Just dig down & take some of the young pieces from round the outside. It dies back by fall but starts to revive after Christmas. In cold areas they tend to put a bale of straw over it. In Yorkshire I used to put some in a cold frame.
Hope this helps. There are masses of recipes for it on English food sites, have a look see!
Enjoy your weekend. :tools :tools :tools :tools :tools
:rose Hattie :rose
