Rhubarb

Rhubarb hugging the rainwater tank

The second Rhubarb harvest of the season is drawing near, the first of which was cutting half of the first vigorous stems in the early spring.  This harvest looks to be the largest yet--a half bushel of 1/2 to 1" stems, some turning red. This is the second year of growing five plants from root stock ($3.95 a plant at Holiday Nursery), all of which are in 3 to 5 gallon pots. The pots bought me time in deciding their eventual placement in the garden, and learned a little more about the water and soil needs of this hardy perennial; they'll go into the corner plots of the waffle garden of perennials where the asparagus roots failed to take.

It took me forever to decipher the tongue-in-cheek mid-western saying of, "think the rain will hurt the rhubarb?"  See, in the arid regions of the world, rain comes sometimes in flooding torrents of rain or hail, damaging many of the large leaves of rhubarb and squash type leaves; Or, I thought, as I had bought these plants as rather dried roots, more slender, but similar to a preserved tulip bulbs, maybe they needed to have a dry dormant period to return vigorously each year? In the end, jokes on NPR's Prairie Home Companion and an old miners account of life high above Telluride, CO gave me more context, and then, growing these beautiful plants for two years now has showed me they love as much water as you can give them. 

The rainwater tank is half-full at 600 gallons, but I'd still love to wink to Racheal during a steady downpour and ask if she thought the rain would hurt the rhubarb.