In my post Cutting off the Rhubarb's Flower Bud: what are we missing? I included a picture of said flower and pointed out that it wasn't really worth the wait. The other reason you shouldn't let your rhubarb flower is that it could well be the end of the plant.
Which is what happened to mine. The plant pictured died down for winter, never to be seen again. It had always been a weakling anyway, being Glaskins Perpetual grown from seed.
It takes some time for seed-grown rhubarb to bulk up enough to produce a good number of sticks (I'd personally say longer than the two years suggested on The Rhubarb Compendium, a comprehensive and excellently referenced site, but I didn't exactly cosset my plant).
We still have a plant of Glaskins Perpetual, around eight years on, and although it does now produce numerous sticks, they are spindly affairs that mean you need twice as many as you might pick from, say, a Victoria. On the whole, I'd go for planting crowns of rhubarb (that's the root part, if you're not sure), widely available in seed catalogues. Altogether more robust, producing thicker stalks.
...Landscape Juice Network
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