This is a plant that I honestly thought I had already written about, but after looking through my archive I realized I hadn’t yet!

Here are good reasons to grow rhubarb and the basics of what you should know to grow your own:

Scientific Name: Rheum rhabarbarum

Preferred Habitat: Rich soils with high organic matter. They seem to grow best on land that has had manure on it recently.

Edible Parts: Stalks, roots (medicinal use)

Distribution: The cooler zones in the US, Europe, and some parts of western Asia.

Harvest Season: Early summer (generally the same time as the first strawberries)

Look-Alikes: There is one plant commonly mistaken for rhubarb: Burdock also has very large, similarly-shaped leaves, however the stems are thinner, and slightly hairy.

This is another look-alike that is an edible and medicinal plant, however it tastes very bitter. Rhubarb will generally have reddish stems that are smooth and not hairy.

Nutrition (Per 100g, cooked with added sugar):

Additionally, rhubarb has a higher polyphenol content than kale, and is a good source of fiber.

Rhubarb is a unique vegetable because it has a sweet and tart flavor spectrum rather than a bitter or herbal taste.

Because of this, people often mistake it for a fruit in desserts, and the USDA officially classifies it as one.

Rhubarb can be used to make many sauces, curd, syrups, desserts, fermented beverages, confections like marshmallows, candies, it can be pickled, canned, and most famously: made into strawberry rhubarb pie (a common American favorite).

I would love to see rhubarb paired with other flavors like vanilla, serviceberry, or honeyberry.

Because of the sour taste, it is almost never eaten raw (although I sometimes do) and nearly always sweetened.

The roots are traditionally used medicinally but I have zero experience there!

In addition, rhubarb are great biomass plants for getting large amounts of plant matter to use as compost and mulch! I highly recommend adding it to your food forest.

Rhubarb is a perennial that should be allowed to take take a couple seasons to mature before harvesting.

I recommend using some kind of animal manure when possible if you’d like to get truly large rhubarb. Anecdotally I’ve seen them get very big but it is also influenced by genetics.

Rhubarb also actually requires cold climates to grow properly so you will likely struggle with it if you live in the south or another warm region.

This is another plant that really kind of does it’s own thing without too much trouble in it’s preferred habitat!

When temperatures start to warm, rhubarb will bolt and shoot up a seed pod starting in it’s second year (making it technically a biennial, but for our purposes a perennial) with a huge cluster of seeds! Most gardeners will cut them off to divert energy back into root or leaf growth but there’s not much harm in letting them go.

Rhubarb is also high in oxalic acid (just like wood sorrel and spinach) which is partially responsible for the tangy sour flavor.

In high amounts this can be an issue for people with a vitamin B deficiency, high vitamin C intake, or for people lacking beneficial gut bacteria.

I have read that there is actually a decent amount of genetic diversity in seed-grown rhubarb so it is a good candidate for improvement! Just be prepared to wait a long time for seed-grown plants.

An interesting note; this year I noticed the physical similarities between rhubarb and it’s relatives in the dock family (see my super old article on sheep sorrel) and to japanese knotweed.

Rhubarbs tend to have toxic leaves because of the higher concentration of acids and other compounds that can make you sick, so stick to eating just the stalks and the roots if you learn enough about the medicinal use.

There are several cultivars of rhubarb that vary slightly in flavor or in size. That said, you won’t find a lot of color variation or anything so you can’t go too wrong no matter what you choose:

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