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How to Grow Rhubarb
As I sit here looking out my kitchen window, it is absolutely pouring outside. Ten minutes ago, it was sunshine and blue skies. Welcome to winter/spring in the Pacific Northwest, right? I love it, rain included. In one corner of our little backyard garden, our four rhubarb plants do too.
Rhubarb thrives in our cool climate, growing like gangbusters. The plants go dormant in the winter, then start poking through the soil in early spring. I love watching them unfurl their leaves, growing into huge green plants in a matter of weeks.
Other than an occasional scoop of compost or mulch and plenty of water, they are perfectly happy to be left alone. My kind of plant!
Rhubarb plants are to spring what zucchini plants are to summer: low-maintenance with plenty to use and more to give away. And, like zucchini, I usually chop up dozens of cups with my food processor which I measure into freezer bags.
I have visions of pulling the bags out of my chest freezer in the middle of December to make sauce or muffins or pies. Which I never do. As I write this, I have several bags of both chopped rhubarb and shredded zucchini patiently waiting in my freezer. From last year. Sigh.
If you’re an amateur gardener like myself, I’d highly recommend planting some rhubarb in your garden if you have the space. I could take or leave rhubarb personally, but my husband is a big fan.
Even if you hate rhubarb, it’ll give your green thumb a nice ego boost because these plants are incredibly hardy. You don’t even have to eat the stalks; you can just enjoy the nice, green foliage.
Despite their whole fruit-vegetable identity crisis, they are very confident plants who don’t mind being separated. In fact, the plants actually thrive when split up, and it’s a good idea to do it every 4-5 years to encourage greater growth.
My husband and I split our two plants into four last year. It was a quick hack job, but they still forgave us and are now producing more than the three of us can eat.
If you know someone who grows rhubarb, ask them if you can dig out a root division to transplant in your garden. This is best done in the early spring.
If you don’t have your own rhubarb plant, there are several different options to track down this strange spring vegetable. Although locally grown, the rhubarb stalks I found in the produce departments of both WinCo and Safeway were expensive (about $2/lb) and had definitely seen better days. A better bet would be your local farmer’s market or rhubarb-growing friend/neighbor.
Ready to start cooking? Here are some awesome rhubarb recipes:
Strawberry Rhubarb Pie (no-roll crust)
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I love ruebarb! I got my plant from a neighbor. On Allrecipes.com I found a recipe for ruebarb bread! It’s amazing! Thanks for the tip of how/when to split for more!
This sounds interesting! I have to try growing my own rhubarb! Thanks for the idea!
On craigslist i answered an ad to come dig up a rhubarb plant. It wasn’t a plant it was a TREE branch. It was huge, probably 8 inches around and about 4 ft long. Thinking it had been there for a loooong time! It had even grown under their deck. Not wanting to take their house apart getting it out I had to chop and pull and dig to get it out. By the time all was said and done I had lots of huge pieces. I took it home and asked my husband if he would check it and see if any of it was plantable. He continued to “chop” it up to my horror and planted all the pieces! I now have 12 huge plants that come up like gang busters! Last summer there was 3 pickings from it and we had rhubard coming out of our ears. On Pinterest I saw a post for canning rhubarb pie filling so I canned and canned. If nothing else I thought I could give it away for Christmas. But a gal who I was buying eggs from said she would trade me my pie filling for eggs so I had fresh farm eggs till almost Christmas. What a blessing!
Is there a variety of rhubarb you would recommend for the PDX area?
I purchase a bag of composted steer manure each year for my rhubarb. (Our soil is clay.) I’ve read that this is great for rhubarb and ours seems to like it. About $3 at Home Depot or BiMart
Thanks Emily and Twin Mom,
I’m gonna give your advice a try and hope to have yummy rhubarb next spring!
My husband & I love rhubarb pie/custard but I haven’t had any luck growing it here in the Tacoma area. I will not pay the $2/lb that I’ve also seen in the stores. Can you tell me when you planted yours, did you do anything special with the soil and how much sunlight do your plants get a day?
Hmm. We planted/transplanted ours in the early spring. We’ve also moved them in the fall, and they still came up the following spring. It’s a pretty forgiving plant. We gave the plants a good dose of compost and plenty of water but no special treatment other than that. Our soil is pretty crummy, but they don’t seem to mind. They like well-drained soil and full sunlight. Hope you have success soon!
I was going to ask about the leaves being poisionous – to kids and dogs.
Something is eating my Rhubarb leaves (slugs???) and they look terrible. The stocks look fine, but without their leaves, I can’t imagine they will stay healthy. Any advice?
If it is a slug you can make a ring of salt around the plant to keep slugs from getting to it. Just be careful not to use too much salt. You could kill your plant.
Slugs eat my rhubarb leaves, too. Why doesn’t it have a toxic effect on them?!? I just sprinkle slug bait around the perimeter of the plants and wait for those slimy little beasts to fall into my trap.
Don’t forget – rhubarb *leaves* are poisonous! So if you have little ones like I do, make sure they’re not the put-everything-in-the-mouth-to-try-it kind 🙂 I was about to plant some in the backyard when my mom reminded me of this, and I changed locations to the front yard just in case my toddler gets curious.
I read about rhubarb leaves being poisonous after my 2-year old daughter spent the morning ripping a bunch of leaves up into tiny bits to carry around the backyard in her toy buckets. Oops. I was happy to find out, though, that an average 145 lb. person would have to eat the equivalent of 11 lbs. of rhubarb LEAVES to cause death. It’s obviously not recommended to eat them, however, as a smaller fraction could still cause sickness. Good tip on keeping an eye on the kiddos!
We like stewed rhubarb as a side dish and freezing it first means it requires less cooking. Put a quart of chopped rhubarb, 1/2 c sugar and a dash of salt in a covered dish in your microwave (start at 50% power for 20 min) Cook longer or add more sugar to taste.
We have a large rhubarb plant in our garden and another one that we just transplanted nearby. I love rhubarb/strawberry jam and that is the only way I use mine. I’m not much of a pie maker so I have never tried rhubarb pie but am willing to try. Thanks for sharing the pictures!
Those are beautiful plants Angela! What a nice picture to look out your window and see everyday. 🙂
I was just talking about planting rhubarb in the new house we moved into last week! I love making rhubarb jam with a touch of cinnamon as well as strawberry-rhubarb pies and muffins. YUM. Our Farmer’s Market opens tomorrow and I’m hoping I can get my grubby paws on a boatload of this stuff.