a fantastic addition to any garden rhubarb is a perennial vegetable that around here is most often
used as a fruit it's relatively easy to grow has few pest or disease problems and a tantalizingly
tart flavor healthy plants can be productive for years and like many perennials will actually
benefit from division so you will end up with more rhubarb that you can plant out or share with
family or friends now for whatever reason you may not be able to do an in-ground rhubarb planting
whether that's lack of space or heavy poor draining soil but the good news is is that rhubarb
can be successfully grown in containers and in today's video i'm going to show you how to do that
step number one is choosing the right location rhubarb typically does best in full sun usually
at least six to eight hours but in climates with very harsh hot summers it will benefit
from some afternoon shade rhubarb is very cold tolerant many varieties do best in zones
three to seven and here in my zone six garden i don't have to provide my container plantings
with any extra protection these can sit outside all winter long and they're fine
now if you live in zones 3 4 up in those northern climates you may benefit from providing your above
ground rhubarb with a little extra protection whether that's insulating the base of the pot
with straw bales or just bringing your containers into an unheated greenhouse through the winter
keep in mind that rhubarb does need a cold dormancy period to remain productive so that's
a number of hours spent at temperatures below 40 degrees fahrenheit so you don't want to get your
rhubarb plants too warm through the winter you definitely want to give them some cold exposure
the second consideration for container rhubarb is soil type and your container
well-draining loamy soil is best for rhubarb if there's one thing that rhubarb cannot stand
it is wet feet or having its roots wet all of the time and often rhubarb that is grown
in these conditions will tend towards rot most high quality potting soils will work feel free
to use your garden soil if it is nice and loose and loamy but i do recommend adding good quality
compost or well-aged manure to whatever you are filling your container with and i will go up to
a one-to-one ratio of soil to compost or manure when planting rhubarb because it is a heavy feeder
rhubarb is not particular about ph but prefers the soil in the range of 5.5 to 7.0 rhubarb does
need plenty of room so i recommend going with a larger size containers most varieties will get
about three to four feet tall with an equal spread and they have a pretty robust root system so the
container that i am using here is approximately 24 inches across by 15 inches deep the other
thing that you want to make sure of is that your container has plenty of drainage holes again to
avoid your rhubarb sitting in wet soil so let's get to the good part the planting the first thing
i'm going to do is fill my container nearly to the top with my mix of soil and compost and manure
and whenever i plant anything in a container i like to thoroughly saturate the soil prior
to planting so i'm just going to let a hose run in here for a while
till this mix of soil and manure and compost is really well saturated
so once i have this thoroughly saturated and all of the excess water drains out i am ready
to plant now you may notice that your soil level drops significantly once you've gone through
this process if that happens just add a couple more inches of topsoil and you're good to go
today i am planting an actively growing rhubarb starch so this is a potted plant this variety
is one called kangaroo it's from gurney seed and nursery company and these are really easy you're
just going to plant your potted plant at the same depth that it's growing in the container
you can do the same thing with dormant bare root crowns you want to bury that about two inches
beneath the soil with the crown or the point where active growth will occur in the spring
facing upward crowns can be a little bit tricky to tell which end is which i'm hoping to do a
video on planting dormant bare root crowns in the spring but i'll show you here quickly an
illustration of what a crown looks like now as i mentioned rhubarb is a very heavy feeder and one
of the best things you can do for it is provide a heaping helping of compost or aged manure
you can also top dress it with manure compost in the spring and you can feed with a balanced
fertilizer each spring right now i'm going to give this a dose of vegetable food this is a 4-5-4
formulation that i'm just going to scratch into the surface of the soil
what you want to avoid is a high nitrogen fertilizer and this is because a high nitrogen
fertilizer will signal to the plant to put on a lot of foliar growth and right now you're wanting
this plant to focus on putting on root growth not full your growth so stay away from the high
nitrogen after planting you're going to want to make sure your transplant receives about one inch
of water per week so if you don't receive that in rainfall just make sure to get out and water
it really well once a week and just to give you an idea of the kind of growth that you can expect
this plant back here was a small potted start just like this one that i planted back at the end of
may of this year so just over four months ago and you can see how much growth this has put on
already now it would be tempting to harvest this at this point but for the optimal health
and longevity of your plant it is ideal to wait until the second year to start harvesting stalks
this is going to give your plant plenty of time to establish a really nice healthy root system
and ensure that it is productive in the long term once you've reached that second season and are
ready to start harvesting stalks can be harvested any time after they reach the desired size in
most growing areas that's going to be a window of about six weeks from mid-spring until early summer
now something i didn't learn until this year is that the proper way to harvest rhubarb is to grab
the stalk by the base twist and pull rather than cutting the stalks with a knife this is because
that knife cut point can be an entry for pests and diseases as well as risking spreading diseases via
the knife from plant to plant i've also been told that that twist and pull method of harvest spurs
the plant into further production but i have not verified that yet the other thing to keep in mind
while harvesting is that you never want to harvest more than a third to a half of the total stalks of
the plant at one time this is going to ensure that your plant still has enough reserved energy to
continue production and like i mentioned you would typically taper off your harvest about mid-summer
because this is going to give your plant time to build up its reserves and push itself into
production for the next season for optimal harvests you'll also want to remove any flower
stalks that appear because allowing the plants to go to seed is going to divert energy unnecessarily
from the plant's stalk production unless of course you want to allow your plants to go to seed to
collect the seed to grow on in which case go right ahead so i hope if you have been hesitant to grow
rhubarb before because of spacious space issues or soil issues that you'll be willing to give it
a try now and keep in mind that most of these tips can be applied to your in-ground rhubarb plantings
as well and if you found today's video helpful please consider subscribing to my
channel growfully with jenna for more garden tips thanks for watching and i'll see you next time
you