Fourth generation rhubarb grower Robert Tomlinson talks about how his family has harvested the forced rhubarb crop the same way for over 140 years.
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00:00 I'm Robert Thomason, we're in Pudsey, I'm a fourth generation rhubarb grower, we've been here since the late 1880s, so nearly 140 years.
00:10 The roots are grown outside for two years, which are propagated on from our own roots, so we cut them into sets and replant them.
00:18 Grow the roots outside for two years, and then in the second autumn, after a period of cold, we dig the roots up and fetch them into the forcing shed.
00:26 Turn out the lights and keep it warm, and it grows looking for the light really.
00:31 Quite unique to Yorkshire, there used to be 200 growers at one time, hundreds of sheds, and now we're down to 10 growers.
00:39 We call the rhubarb triangle, Leeds, Bradford, Wakefield, if you've got a map and drew some lines on it, that triangle, there used to be 200 growers in and around that area, that's why it got a nickname 100 years ago.
00:53 If you've got a root in your garden or your allotment, in winter when it's dormant, put a dustbin over it, or you can get a terracotta forcing pot, you have to put them over it, Victorian times.
01:03 And in spring you should get some, you know, fibrous pink sticks of rhubarb.
01:08 We'll start harvest just after Christmas, early New Year, depending on the weather in the autumn, and we'll probably harvest for 12, 14 weeks really.
01:20 We're sold to catering, most of it goes to catering, to top restaurants, up and down the country, but it even goes out to New York, Paris, Copenhagen, which I still can't believe.
01:34 Brexit made it difficult, before Brexit I used to post it to Berlin and Zurich and anywhere, just overnight, but now my customer in London, they sell all the paperwork out and it's hard work for them, and all the extra cost, so I just leave it to them now.
01:49 And do you like rhubarb?
01:51 I am crumble, yeah, but I've got a custard on it.