Rhubarb is an interesting vegetable to grow in your garden. First, it’s stalks are the edible part of the plant and they’re very sweet. Beyond being a sweet stem plant, they also grow in cooler climates and prefer temperatures to stay below 40F (4C) for extended periods of time. If this wasn’t weird enough, the leaves of rhubarb contain oxalic acid and are poisonous. Despite the poisonous leaves the stems are safe to eat in reasonable quantities.
Rhubarb Details
- Family: Polygoonaceae
- Growing Season: Spring and fall
- Growing Zones: 3 through 8
- Spacing: 36-48 inches (91-122 cm) apart
- Seed to Harvest time: Roughly 1 year
- Indoor Starting: Not recommended
- Earliest Planting: As soon as ground can be worked
- Watering: Water when soil is dry, keeping soil moist, but never wet. Do not over water. Roughly one inch per week.
- Sunlight Requirements: Full sun to partial shade
- Planting: plant starters (crowns) deep enough that the top sits 1 inch (2.5 cm) below the soil. if planting from seed, plant several seed 1 inch deep and cull the weakest sprouts early on.
- Weeding: Rhubarb is relatively weed resistant and will spread out to overtake weeds on it’s own.
- Harvesting: Harvest rhubarb stalks only. The leaves contain oxalic acid and should be discarded.
- Known Pests: Rhubarb is relatively pest free.
More About Rhubarb
Rhubarb is a fairly common plant, but many people are overly fearful of the poisonous nature of the leaves. While ingesting any amount of the leaves can be harmful, you would need to eat many pounds of leaves in a single sitting to die from it. Another thing that people are fearful of is kidney damage. Eating rhubarb everyday can cause the development of kidney stones, but having rhubarb as an occasional sweet treat is perfectly safe (which is why it is sold in grocery stores)!
With the the scary stuff out of the way we can finally discuss the details of the plant itself. Rhubarb takes a long time to grow to full maturity, but if you raise it in an area where it can survive year round you can harvest rhubarb for up to 8 years (some people even report plants lasting 15 years)! Yes it takes up a lot of space for a long time, but it is relatively low maintenance, so once you get it started you simply have to keep an eye on it and harvest it from time to time.
One of the best features of rhubarb is that it is relatively pest free. It’s big and it spreads out often overtaking weeds that would grow nearby. It has a large root system for energy storage and because of this can survive harsher cold climates. The oxalic acid in it’s leaves makes it hard of insects to eat it, and it’s thick tart stalks aren’t to inviting to non-humans. The only drawback here is that rhubarb can have a hard time in hot dry climates, meaning it has a limited range of growing zones.
Rhubarb Tasting and Food Notes
Rhubarb is a sweet and tart vegetable. The stalks are fibrous like celery, but softer and less stringy. While it is most commonly used in baking to make rhubarb pie, it can also be eaten raw so long as you only eat the stems of the plant.
Rhubarb has slightly fallen out of favor in the US over the years, but despite it’s lower popularity it is still a fabulous snack when taken fresh from the garden. If you don’t want to use all your rhubarb fresh, it preserves well too. Rhubarb can be pickled like most other vegetables, but when pickled it becomes a sweet and tangy snack. Rhubarb can also easily be used to flavor other things like sodas, ice creams, and custards. The stalk so readily gives up it’s flavor that it makes preparing anything with it a snap!
Should I Grow Rhubarb In My Garden?
Rhubarb is not for everyone. It takes up a lot of space, it lives for a very long time, and it’s culinary uses are all centered around it’s pronounced and strong flavor. If you like rhubarb and you have the space for it, it’s worth growing due to how easy it is to care for. If you’re short on space or like to rotate plants more frequently, rhubarb might not be for you.