home-garden-rhubarb

When I eat or see a nice patch of rhubarb my mind goes back to when I was about 8 years old and had rhubarb for the first time, right from our home garden. Living on a farm we had a huge garden behind the house.

My kid brother, a year and half younger than myself, and I would raid the garden for stalks of rhubarb and then we would break off a piece of the block of rock salt the cows would lick and then enjoy the sensation. My face could contort into some funny shapes but it was so good.

rhubarb-patch

Here in New Brunswick we have a patch of rhubarb out behind our garage. It was there when we bought our home but it’s not in the garden as there was no garden yet. It’s been a few years now and we have a home garden started and now we want to divide the rhubarb patch and move it to the home garden area because the rhubarb will get so much more direct sunlight during the growing season. As it is now it only gets about an hour of sun at high now and then the garage blocks it for the rest of the day.

I wasn’t exactly sure how to divide and replant rhubarb so I had to do some looking through some of my old home gardening magazines but I managed to find a helpful article in May 2000 Canadian Gardening magazine. It was a short little article by Heather Apple called Raising Rhubarb, but it showed me all I needed to know. Those are the articles I like, right to the point.

rhubarb-crownsPropagating Rhubarb Crowns Or Segments

Credit where credit is due, so I will be following Heather’s example, from her article in May 2000, mentioned above.

The main reason we are going to move part of our rhubarb patch is so that it will get full sun instead of an hour or two a day.

We Need Good Drainage And Rhubarb Loves Full Sun

We plan to transplant behind our new home garden where the drainage isn’t the best but with a bit of work, like we did for our garden, it will be great drainage and of course full sun for most of the day.

The soil can be somewhat acidic which works great for us as our soil is very acidic.

Spacing And Depth For Planting Rhubarb – 2 ft Apart – 2 ft Deep

Because rhubarb can grow so large you want to give it some elbow room to grow. For this reason you should give each segment or crown about three feet around it.

Make the hole about two feet across and a foot and half deep. This is the time I actually dig deeper and replace most of the dirt with top soil and compost because our soil is dense clay and needs work.

Be sure to give at least six inches of compost or well decomposed manure in the bottom to give those root the best chance to get strong and healthy. That’s what is going to grow you that rhubarb you want.

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