How to Grow Rhubarb - Complete Growing Guide

well hello everyone and welcome to another very exciting episode here on the my gardener channel today's going to be another complete growing guide for all of you that have been requesting this one it's time for it i wanted to let the rhubarb behind me get a little bit larger so that i could actually have a nice prop for this video because when we first transplanted it they were they're really tiny plants that we actually started from seed by the way um we actually have a video on that too that you should go check out if you're interested in how to grow them you should probably learn to grow them from seed as well so that might help you out but we did a basically a tutorial on how to start them from seed and so i figured it'd be fitting to do a growing guide on them so what i first want to start off by saying is that rhubarb is a very easy plant to grow rhubarb is not difficult so i know there's a lot of people out there that kind of want to create whole gardens curated solely for beginning gardeners or like a very low maintenance garden not only is the rhubarb a perennial it's very cold tolerant it's very drought tolerant it is very heat tolerant and uh it's it's very it's just very beginner friendly so the first thing that i do want to talk about is the soil type so the soil type that we have here is compost but again it's very it's very beginner friendly we don't have that much compost here because this is actually in ground we have this in kind of a back to eden style gardening method and for those of you that are not aware of what the bacterium method is it is basically using wood chips as a mulch to suppress weeds and they they break down and feed the plant over time it's very effective for perennials and stuff that you don't want to have weeds around so for instance we use this method with our asparagus we use this method with our our artichokes and we also do this method with our our rhubarb here the variety that this is is victoria rhubarb it's a very reliable variety for those of you that want to find seeds and it is going to be your your more popular eating variety there's a lot of there's a lot of different varieties out there but some are more tart some are more um some are a little more sweet they've been bred to be a little more sweet the victoria rhubarb i find is the most kind of all around because sometimes you want that tartness for like a strawberry rhubarb pie stuff like that um so the next thing that it comes to is watering like i said they are very beginner friendly we do not water these actually believe it or not we do not water these they get whatever the the ground the ground is given um from rain um it does get quite dewy here so that actually acts almost like a rain pretty much every night it gets so damp here that it's almost like it rains so um if i'm looking down at the soil here it's dry but i can tell there's some soil moisture even right on the top here so the the wood chips help to keep the moisture in but again we don't water them that much i would say if they had to get like a measurement they probably get maybe a gallon a month if that and that's being completely honest so i really don't measure it cause like i said we don't we don't water so it's probably just rain usually rain and dew now the next thing that i did want to talk about is fertilizing fertilizing is the one thing you're going to want to continue to do with your plants when we planted these we we applied trifecta to the to the square here we have eight plants we basically applied it to the square worked it into the soil and then we planted the plants that's going to give them their initial boost that they're going to need to get started but they're going to need continuous feeding because of the fact they're perennial and so one thing that a lot of people do is they forget that perennials need feedings twice a year you want to feed them in the spring with a very good nitrogen-rich fertilizer whether it be composted cow manure chicken chicken manure or just an all-purpose fertilizer you want to make sure that you give them something that's very nitrogen rich because that's going to encourage that new leaf growth then what you want to do is in the fall time you want to give them a phosphorus rich fertilizer so whether that's blood meal or just again an all-purpose fertilizer whatever you choose make sure that it has a lot of phosphorus because that phosphorus is going to establish the root base so it can go through that winter so again spring growth fall uh roots dormancy um and it's just a very easy way to remember it because uh if you flip-flop the two you'd be in big trouble um so yeah that's that's the basically the fertilizing aspect it's really simple but a lot of people forget it honestly a lot of people forget that they need to be fertilized twice so the next thing that i do want to talk about is the the temperature because the fact a lot of people ask you know how cold is too cold because really you can grow them in just about any temperature uh you know high it's just low is you don't want to you don't want to go past about negative 18. so if you're if your winters get down to about negative 18 you're gonna have trouble growing these because the fact that the roots are they're they're they're very aggressive um but still negative 18 is just too cold for the crown of the asparagus and earth's the asparagus for the for the rhubarb and and you're going to have issues so just make sure that it's not you know antarctic cold um but yeah we have no problem here especially with the the nice little mulch layer that acts as an insulated barrier you can do the same thing because here in michigan it does get down on occasion to negative 10. it's gotten down to negative 18 before so you know it's it does get cold here very very cold in the winter time but having this mulch here really helps to insulate the roots which is good you can use leaves as well or grass clippings is another thing just some type of mulch and that's personally why we decided to go to the back to eden method because in the raised beds we do not have the the insulation that you get from an in-ground bed mulched with wood chips another bonus for the the bacteria method there now when it comes to harvesting it's very important to harvest at the right time rhubarb is something that can be dangerous if consumed wrong the leaves are poisonous believe it or not so do not eat the leaves the roots are poisonous don't eat the roots i don't know why you'd eat the roots but i just want to cover that because they're poisonous you also do not want to eat any of the stems that are light green they can make these very sick they're very very bitter and this and your stomach will refuse them positively the way that you can tell when they're ready to harvest is in early spring you want to make sure that the the parts you're harvesting are red red is edible anything other than that it's not edible so it's a very delicious plant to grow it's very nutritious in fact it's very high in vitamin c super high in iron and minerals because the roots go down super deep they they mine those minerals way down deep that are lacking in the in the top you know three four inches of soil where most other plants grow so you get a lot of minerals and good stuff for your body from from the rhubarb but you just have to know what to eat and what not to eat and it's very simple red eat not red don't eat very simple right all right glad we got that out of the way now the very last thing that i want to talk about is sunlight sunlight is crucial for growing uh rhubarb here what you want to do is you want to make sure that you have at least five hours of sun we always say that five hours is kind of the bare minimum for the rhubarb but you want to make sure that the the rhubarb gets at least the five hours we give it a well in this garden i mean goodness it gets beyond full sun full sun is technically around five to eight hours of sun that's considered full sun this garden gets like extra full sun i guess it gets like 11 hours of sun in peak season so it's way more than you need but it will love it too because what sunlight does is it actually produces energy in the leaves which the more energy the plant has the bigger it can get the more developed it can get the faster it can grow and the more can produce for you so the more sunlight you can give it the better plain and simple so there you go there is your complete growing guide on rhubarb hopefully you all enjoyed hopefully you all learned something new and as always if you have any comments or questions post them in the comments box below i would be glad to answer them for you let me know if you're growing rhubarb yourself and how it's doing and i know that it is it's a favorite in the summer time for me because i love strawberry pie strawberry rhubarb pie and i also love rhubarb jam delicious it's great so give it a shot if you haven't already and we'll talk to you all later this is luke from the mi gardener channel hoping you all are growing bigger going home hoping you have also checked out our other growing guides go check those things out we have like at least 22 23 and there's more to come so go check them out uh over at mygardener.com or we have a we have a playlist for those right here on youtube so go check them out they're going to be a very beneficial source of information for you and we'll talk to you later remember to go big or go home bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 137,201

Keywords: howto, rubarb, growing rubarb, how-to, how to, complete growing guide, growing guide, migardener.com, how to grow, complete, migardener, how to grow rhubarb, Premiere_Elements_10, rhubarb, tutorial, growing rhubarb

Id: yfacHkAqb4w

Length: 9min 48sec (588 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 10 2016