All About Growing Rhubarb

By Barbara Pleasant
Published on January 10, 2014
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Illustration by Keith Ward
Add this perennial crop to your garden and you’re sure to create some new culinary treasures from your harvest. Tangy rhubarb can easily star in pies, but can also work as the base for great sauces, salad dressings, preserves and chutneys.

(For details on growing many other vegetables and fruits, visit our Crops at a Glancecollection page.)

Growing rhubarb (Rheum rhabarbarum) is especially suited to climates that are cold enough to grow tulips as perennials (generally Zones 3 to 7). The plants must have a cold-induced period of winter rest, and they also suffer when temperatures rise above 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

In the northern half of North America, rhubarb plants can be phenomenally productive, yielding stalk after stalk for pies, preserves, baked goods and teas. Rhubarb’s sour lemony flavor is due in large part to oxalic acid, which reaches toxic levels in rhubarb leaves. Rhubarb leaves should never be eaten, but are perfectly safe to use as compost or mulch.

Rhubarb Varieties

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