The rhubarb is amazing this year! I took a photo of the rhubarb mid-May last year. By mid-April this year, the rhubarb was just as big as in that photo. Call it global warming, call it a mild winter, call it the uncertainty of gardening…by any name, all the perennial plants are a month ahead of normal growth and doing really well.
Rhubarb Patch May 11, 2014 (photo: Michelle Zeiger)
These plants are second year transplants and doing as well as the established plants nearby.
Rhubarb Patch May 15, 2015 (photo: Michelle Zeiger)
We love our rhubarb patch (see Rhubarb’s On its Way.) It is our most reliable local “fruit.” We enjoy plain rhubarb sauce, rhubarb cobbler, rhubarb soda and rhubarb wine. We have even had some nice spicy rhubarb pickles. By the time I can some up for winter and Mark makes a couple gallons of wine, we often are left watching the plants wishing we could take some more, but needing to leave a few stalks to feed the plants for next year.
The first year we owned the property and before we had moved in, the plants had not been harvested in a year or two and the plants were extremely healthy. I took a backpack full of 2 foot long rhubarb stalks home with me on one visit. Now I am keeping an eye out for more plants so we can have as much rhubarb as we want all summer long. But so far, it looks like we’ll have a bumper crop this year.