RHUBARB is too accommodating for its own good. Because it’ll grow well enough in almost any unloved corner of the garden, that’s where it tends to end up.

But if you can spare it an open spot that gets plenty of sun, has soil that is moist but at the same time free-draining, and doesn’t catch late frosts, you might be surprised at the enormous amount of food one rhubarb plant can provide each year.

The flavour will be much better, too. If the ground’s not frozen or saturated, then February is a convenient time for starting a new rhubarb plant.

Ideally, you’ll have heaped well-rotted manure or garden compost onto the site last autumn; rhubarb does best when well fed.

But if not, it’s not too late. Weed a patch of soil about a yard (one metre) square, and then dump two buckets full of manure on the surface. Using a garden fork, mix the manure into the top foot (30cm) of the ground.

You should be able to buy a rhubarb crown, which is the rooted division of a plant used for starting a new one, for around a fiver online.

When it arrives, try to get it planted within a few days, so that it doesn’t dry out.

Of course, a division taken from a friend’s existing clump will do just as well: in that case, select a piece from the outside of the clump, because that’s the youngest growth.

I have grown rhubarb from seed in the past.

It’s not difficult, and it produces perfectly good plants, though less reliably.

It’s cheaper than buying crowns, but it has the disadvantage of adding at least an extra year on to the wait for your first harvest.

When you think that we’ve been growing rhubarb in this country for well over 200 years, you’d expect there to be a consensus on how to do it by now.

But in fact there’s still one point on which authorities differ: when you’ve dug a hole and put your new crown into it, should you refill the soil so as to leave the very tip of the crown just hidden, or just showing?

One reliable source will say one thing, another the opposite.

I plant mine so that the growing tip is about an inch (2.5cm) below the ground.

This may mean it has more work to do to break through in spring, but I feel it protects the potentially vulnerable tip from frost during its first few months.

During the first year, don’t pick any stems from the new plant at all. This will improve its long-term vigour, and allow much larger harvests in the future.

In the second year, take only a few stems.

From the third year onwards you can harvest the plant fully, while always leaving some stems alone so that the clump is never without leaves during the growing season.

Every autumn, apply a mulch of manure or compost around the crown.

Mat Coward’s book, Eat Your Front Garden, is available from prospectbooks.co.uk.