How To Grow Rhubarb To Live 30+ YEARS!

old MacDonald had a farm and rhubarb was his name-o I'm gonna show you how to plant it let's go so growing up rhubarb has always had a place in my life my mom planted rhubarb in our very first Garden two years before I was even born and rhubarb is something that grows super big it's Larger than Life it's super delicious and as a kid you know this plant would get as big as I was and it was so fun to have in the garden but I also have so many fond memories of all of the rhubarb jam that my mom would make or the strawberry rhubarb pie for the Fourth of July that she'd bring to every family get-together and it was just such an integral part to my childhood that I wanted to add some into my garden today and not only that but show you guys how to grow it and so in today's episode we're going to talk about every single thing you need to know about how to grow this amazing plant all right so the first thing we want to talk about is the soil now the soil is the most important thing to growing rhubarb successfully if you don't get the soil right well then it's never going to Survive and Thrive and that's because rhubarb has super deep roots that burrow down into the soil and help it to overwinter helps to keep it established so it comes back year after year and so you want to get the soil right now we're going to be growing in pure compost but there's a couple ways that you can actually grow your rhubarb depending on your gardening style so the first way I'm going to show you is if you're growing in ground right so we don't let's pretend we don't have raised beds you're going right in ground the first thing you want to do is you want to do what's called double digging you want to dig down about eight to ten inches deep really prepare the hole where you're going to be putting the rhubarb okay so you prepare a hole again we're gonna we're gonna pretend like we're not in raised beds right we're growing anywhere you want to put your rhubarb in your garden once that is done we're going to bring in some compost right so I'm going to take some compost from the surrounding areas to simulate you taking a bag of bagged compost or bringing in compost or something from your compost pile and you want to make a mound the reason why you want to make a mound is because it's going to help to Slough off excess moisture away from the plant to help the water to move away from the plant because you don't want to suffer Crown rot if water sits near the crown of the rhubarb you're going to have crown rot they're super susceptible to that and it's one of the biggest reasons why rhubarb does not come back that's the first way that you can grow them the second way is in raised beds and all we're going to do no Mound really needed here because the soil is going to be really loose it's already hopefully going to be very well amended so we're simply going to trying to take that mound away we're simply going to just double dig and this way we're going to amend that that soil about well not really a men but just loosen the soil up prevent any compaction that might exist even in raised beds some compaction can happen eight ten inches deep work that soil up and then you're ready to plant or if you want to plant in containers you can do this in containers as well you want to make sure you go with like something like a wine barrel the reason why like a half wine barrel something like that will give you lots of soil for that plant to actually grow in and survive in you cannot plant it in really anything less than that otherwise it just will not survive it will not Thrive and it's not going to come back year after year so make sure you put it in like you know like a half Wine Barrel and they'll be great but same premise put it in a really good quality potting mix or throw in some compost add some perlite so it doesn't compact doesn't you know doesn't restrict those roots and then it's going to do great even in a container so also make sure there's some good drainage holes obviously and it's going to do well so those are the three ways that you can really grow rhubarb super easily kind of depending on your gardening style so the next thing I want to talk about is the soil itself so coming in close depending on your note regardless of your gardening style the soil is really important and the quality of the soil is super important so check it out all right so like I said when it comes to the soil quality having really good loose soil is so critical now compost is going to provide that but obviously a lot of you can't just go out and fill all your beds up with compost so just amending right where your plants are going to be is kind of the next best option but making sure that the soil where your rhubarb is going to grow is super loose super well draining to accommodate for that root development that you want to move down fast throughout the soil so it helps the plant survive winter but also just so that it's very nutrient dense rhubarb is a huge plant and that means it takes a lot of nutrients to make that huge plant so making sure that your soil is nice and loose and fertile is very important you'll notice here that even though we do have some signs of clay because we dug down about eight ten inches deep this lighter colored clay soil here it breaks up incredibly easy just as if the Brazil it was amended with something like sand now sand and clay kind of make make concrete but if you have compost over time even that clay soil will become loosened by the worms that move up through the clay then back down to the Clay they're kind of Nature's rototiller and so even though we have some signs of clay in here it just breaks up incredibly easily and it's going to help that plant get established so make sure you start with a good quality soil you'll thank me later the second most important thing to growing rhubarb is the location now if you want to pick a location where you're not going to be disturbing it you're not going to be messing with the soil all that much because you want your rhubarb to get established it's true it's super important if you wanted to keep coming back year after year and so we have it in a bed here with some other perennials those aren't going to be disturbed this bed as a whole is kind of set back away from the rest of the garden it's at the very end of our garden so we're not really going to be turning it around and planting a bunch of stuff here all the time so the soil itself is going to be very undisturbed which is critical now the next thing is we want to plant it in a place that we're not going to mind it being there in the next 20 30 years or even more than that so a lot of people they just kind of plant rhubarb anywhere in their Garden thinking oh that's a good spot they don't really give a whole lot of thought to it but then they think yeah but in like 20 years or even in like two years this is going to be a problem and I don't really want it here and so then once you get it planted and it's already established rhubarb does not love to just get moved around all the time it's a perennial it kind of really likes to just grow where it's been placed and so it's super important that we pick a good location right from the get-go that even in the long term is not going to be a problem so that's why this bed is kind of our bed of choice here but also in a location that can sprawl rhubarb has huge leaves we're talking two three foot long leaves and so these leaves need a lot of room so they're not going to be shading out other parts of your garden and if you plant it right in a prime location next to some of your other stuff you're going to be really frustrated by how much shade it casts because it is a huge plant and so um a lot of people just don't have the foresight when they plant their plants in their Garden to really kind of foresee how big their plants are going to get and then the final thing with location is kind of location slash sunlight you want to pick a location that has good amounts of sunlight we're talking anywhere between five and seven hours of full sun I prefer to give something more like eight to nine hours of full sun because these plants are huge and because they're so huge they need lots of energy and where does that energy come from the Sun and so the leaves are basically the plant solar panels and if the solar the solar radiation from the Sun can't reach those solar panels because it's being blocked by a tree or by a house or other plants that plant the rhubarb plant is not going to thrive and survive as much as it would out in the open and so making sure that you have a nice open location for that plant to sprawl and reach the sun is critical the final thing I would say too A lot of people say well what if I don't have five to seven hours can I can I still grow it I would say you can grow it but it's going to struggle from year to year because as that plant grows it's going to grow and it wants to grow to its biological potential but there's always that resistance that's there with the lack of sunlight and you're going to end up with a smaller plant a smaller yield your rhubarb is getting much more spindly much smaller stocks much less leaves and the root size is going to be much smaller as well so it's going to be less Hardy when it comes to Winter hardiness so it's not that you can't grow it in less it's that you probably shouldn't grow it in less and so that's kind of sunlight and location all in one the next thing I want to talk about is actually planting the plant all right so when it comes time to planting your rhubarb the first thing you want to look at is the nutrients right so we talked about compost having it really loose having it really fertile that's going to be great that's going to bring some nutrients to the party however we want to bring some other nutrients to the party in the form of nitrogen and so we're going to be using Trifecta plus which is what we use on all our plants in our garden but Trifecta plus is very high in nitrogen but you can use any High nitrogen fertilizer so such as something like blood meal or even something like chicken manure chicken manure is very high in nitrogen as well and that that high nitrogen is what's going to actually encourage Leaf development and the reason why we want to encourage Leaf development is because rhubarb is primarily leaves and those leaves the bigger they get and the more they have the more energy the plant can actually produce and so we're going to plant our rhubarb in a very nutrient dense High nitrogen environment to really encourage that leaf development now because Trifecta is a well-balanced fertilizer I also want to really encourage you guys to go with something that does have some other nutrients in it as well now nitrogen is the primary focus but having phosphorus potassium and other trace minerals is also really important as well it's just like your diet you don't want to have you know yes bananas are important but why eat just bananas every single day all day all week all year because eventually you're going to need something else and so um it's like too much of any good thing can be a bad bad thing so having a nice a nice well-balanced fertilizer is something that I highly recommend at some point throughout its life now when you get your plants here they're going to look like a weird alien stump and the reason is because these are a crown now the crown should not ever be really buried below the soil right it sits on top of the soil just like a crown sits on top of a king's head and so what we want to do is when we bury this plant we want to bury it just up until the new growth right because the new growth the crown this is basically the crown and the crown grows as the plant grows right so it's super important we don't bury any further than this than this existing Crown here this is all a crown but this is old Crown this is new crown and it's really important if we don't want to suffer things like Crown rot that we don't bury them deeper than the new Crown because as that Crown grows it's going to grow with the plant but if you bury it it's going to take bacteria and fungus and things like that into the crown and it's going to rot it out and that's the biggest reason why your plants down don't survive that's also a reason why we talked about if you're growing in ground to put them on a mound to help that moisture Slough off away from the crown so you're not getting moisture in that Crown there rotting it out so we're going to basically dig a hole here we're going to put our Crown in we're just going to wiggle it in just like that put the soil around it and you'll notice that Crown has not been buried it's just poking out of the soil you don't want to bury it much deeper than that so really quickly I did want to touch on soil PH when we're talking about soil I kind of forgot about it but pH you really want right around 6.5 now we already got our rhubarb planted but prior to planting it's really important you test your pH now our soil here because we're growing in pure compost kind of has a natural pH buffer of right around 6.5 to 7. now that's going to be perfectly fine for growing rhubarb you just want to make sure that your soil is not alkaline anything higher than seven because your plants are really going to struggle most garden plants like a pH of around 6.5 and how you can test your pH is by going to just any Pool Supply Company and getting those little pH test strips and then simply taking a couple scoops of soil throughout your garden mixing it in some water and then dipping the pH test strips in that water and that's going to tell you a pH of your soil now it's really important that you have a pH that's slightly acidic because it helps the plant to uptake nutrients better helps the plant to actually be healthier and to be more resilient so make sure your soil is just slightly acidic and you're going to be great all right now the next most important thing is the temperature now it's really important you plant out your rhubarb when it's still dormant and it's not fully growing you probably saw some of those buds starting to break on our rhubarb plant and that's because we're planting it in late April now preferably I would have planted it about a week sooner just before those buds start to break but if they are breaking that's not a terrible problem you just want to make sure that your rhubarb when you plant it is not actually like fully grown now the only exception to this rule would be if you're planting an actual rhubarb plant you can sometimes get them from garden centers and nurseries where the plant is actually growing that's fine obviously you can't tell it to go back into dormancy so you can plant it but if you're planting a dormant Crown like I like I did today it's really important you pick a nice cool location or a nice cool time to plant so that the plant can actually come out of dormancy slowly and start to focus on some of that root development before it puts all of its energy into forming those leaves because right now it doesn't have any Roots formed at all it's just kind of a dormant Crown but as the plant starts to come out of dormancy it'll do both form roots and form leaves and if it's planted in the soil it can do that if it's just kept inside of a paper bag or it's you know kept inside your fridge where it's kept cool that's you know that's not the best time to uh to be forming leaves and so get it in the ground early when it's still cool you know still well before your last frost date and it's going to do fine rhubarb is very cold hardy and because it's so cold hardy you can plant it out early it'll do a lot better all right and the final thing to growing rhubarb successfully is watering now we just planted it we want to get the plant established obviously because if it's not established it's going to die and so we're going to water this pretty regularly I'd say like once a week sometimes even twice a week if it's needed because we want to get the those roots growing we want to get the plant actually growing once the plant is showing signs of growing and the roots are starting to develop then we can dial the water back in fact we can dial it way back because we don't want to over water now just like we plant the rhubarb in a mound to prevent things like Crown rot that's to keep the water away from the crown if you're watering on a regular basis all the time and the plant doesn't actually really need it you're going to suffer from things like Crown rot and so it's very vital for us to only water when the plant needs it and the plant will tell you when it needs it because the soil itself will be bone dry we typically like to let the soil dry out completely before we re-water and what that does is it actually encourages Deep Roots if you're only ever watering right where the plant is the Root's job is to go out and find water and the deeper those roots go the more water they're going to find because the water is down deep in the soil not right at the surface and so we're just watering temporarily I know on a weekly basis or even a couple times a week to get the roots established and once those roots are growing that's really where we like to practice deep watering which you know which is where we let the soil dry out then we water deeply we let the soil dry out then we water deeply and it's that process of deep watering that helps get those roots down so the plant can be better established find the water be less stressed during heat waves and also find things like nutrients that are buried deep down in the soil so we have to fertilize less and so and that is the everything that you need to know about how to grow rhubarb the only other thing that I would maybe say which we'll talk about later on in fall is following up with a fall fertilizing it's really important you follow up with a fall fertilizing just as you would any other perennial but that's kind of for a fall part to this growing guide but we're just going to take a good well-balanced fertilizer right around kind of early October put it around the plant kind of top dress it put the bed put the plant to bed for winter so that's kind of the very last thing but that is everything you need to know to growing rhubarb I hope you guys enjoyed I hope you try growing it and I really do hope that if you have in your garden that this helped you in some way to kind of kind of reiterate some of the things that you might not have already known so I hope you guys enjoyed I hope you learned something new as always this is Luke from the Mi Gardener Channel reminding you to grow bigger take care guys bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 53,213

Keywords: MIgardener, vegetable gardening, organic gardening

Id: wpetiM9XsD4

Length: 16min 6sec (966 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 28 2023