After many years of trying to grow rhubarb in the PNW and California, it’s finally happened!
Three fine stalks and about a pound of organic fresh strawberries gave us a most delicious strawberry-rhubarb cobbler last Sunday.
Why this year? What’s changed?
#1: The rhubarb is finally getting enough sun to produce a multitude of ruby red stalks. For a number of years, the rhubarb languished in the back garden shade. In its former position, it got 4 hours of very dappled sun, at most, and apparently that’s just not enough. Since I moved the rhubarb out to the roadside, it enjoys many more hours of sun, even if it’s filtered by the neighborhood trees. Kudos to the neighbor who “limbed up” his Doug Firs late last Summer, allowing even more sun into our shaded neighborhood.
#2: Well-rotted steer manure. Two bags of it, one in late Fall last year, as a cold weather mulch, the second in late January before the rhubarb surfaced.
#3 Patience. Last year, the first year after relocating the rhubarb out by the roadside, I was so tempted to pull a few stalks for pie. I’d read that you shouldn’t pull rhubarb the first year after planting, and although technically the rhubarb was planted elsewhere for a number of years, I decided to let the spindly stalks die back into the root. I can’t prove this was of benefit to the plant, but I can’t rule it our either. If I’d read I should refrain from harvesting a second year also, I would probably question that wisdom a little more, and likely sneak a few stalks from the plant.
