Rhubarb plant thriving in front garden
The first 18 years of my life were spent on our family’s dairy farm northern Wisconsin. My mother, father and in fact our whole family spent a lot of time producing food for our meals. We had a large vegetable garden, along with an orchard that provided apples, plums, and grapes. We grew strawberries, raspberries, currents and of course, rhubarb. My mom loved rhubarb and had a lot of different dessert recipes that called for this ingredient. I was ambivalent about those desserts since rhubarb was not my favorite.
As an adult, I never used rhubarb, leaving it behind with my childhood. However, about 7 years ago, I notice a brightly colored rhubarb in a small pot in the garden center and decided to try my hand at growing some in my garden. I planted it in a sunny spot and waited for the harvest. Five years came and went with the new rhubarb looking skinny and not at all like I remembered.
Finally on a visit to my sister Mary’s garden in northern Wisconsin, I saw the big lush rhubarb from my youth. It was grown from a section that Mary had gotten from our mom. Mary gave me a small piece of her rhubarb root and the advice to put plenty of compost on top of the rhubarb each fall since they are heavy feeders. I planted the old fashioned rhubarb that was originally from my mom and put a big bag of composted cow manure over the new plant and another over the skimpy rhubarb that had never done much.
The next year, both rhubarb plants were up and looking good and I harvested a little from each. I did the same bag of compost over each rhubarb again last fall and this year I have a huge bonanza of fruit. I picked rhubarb for our use and then shared the extra with a few friends. As you can see from the above photo, I still have lush rhubarb plants that look great.
So basically, composted cow manure took me from a rhubarb failure to the Queen of Rhubarb in two years.