Gardening With Purpose: Rhubarb – An Edible Landscape Plant

Do you want a double duty landscape that looks attractive and provides food for your table? If so, you should plant Rhubarb (Rheum rhabarbarum) in a sunny part of your garden. Garden rhubarb is a large leaf plant in the buckwheat family. It’s an interesting plant because although the stalks are edible, the leaves are poisonous! This makes it a good plant for gardens that are plagued by bunnies, since the oxalic acid in the leaves isn’t tasty to rabbits either.

Place your rhubarb plant in a sunny location. Mulching around the plant, and occasionally spreading compost on the surface of the soil, will help keep it growing well. It can take a year or two for this perennial to become well established, but once it is it will grow to 3 or 4 feet in diameter, so site it accordingly.

Rhubarb starts to flower in mid-May. Cut those flower stems off so that the plant puts all of its energy into growing more stalks and leaves. The flowers are interesting to use in bouquets, so bring them into the house and put them in a vase!

Harvest rhubarb stems in May and June when they are tender. By the end of June you will want to stop cutting so that the plant can grow and store energy for next year. Rhubarb can be cut into pieces and frozen raw for future use in sauces, breads, pies or muffins. Although most people think of rhubarb as a plant for sweet dishes, it’s also wonderful when used in savory recipes. Search online for “rhubarb and chicken” or “rhubarb and pork” for recipe ideas.