How to grow rhubarbs

Rhubarb is a perennial vegetable grown for its thick, tart leaf stalks, not the leaves themselves, which are toxic and discarded. Unlike the rest of a vegetable garden, it is planted once, usually as a root division, into a permanent corner bed and left in place for years, coming back every spring without replanting. Gardeners grow it for one of the earliest harvests of the year, since stalks are ready to pull before most warm-season crops go in the ground, and for a tart flavor that pairs almost exclusively with sugar in pies and sauces. Established plants send up thick, celery-like stalks twisted and pulled from the crown rather than cut, leaving the base intact to keep producing.

The hardest part of growing rhubarb well is restraint at harvest. South Dakota State University Extension advises never removing more than one-third of a plant's stalks at a time, since each stalk pulled takes its attached leaf, and with it a share of the crown's capacity to photosynthesize. A second-year gardener eager to use a productive-looking plant often strips it harder than that, and the guidance warns overharvesting can push the plant toward flower stalks instead of edible ones. The following spring's stalks come up thinner, and a crown pushed this way for a season or more can take years to recover.