Does Rhubarb Die Back in Summer? Here’s What Really Happens to Your Plants

The ultimate rhubarb guide to growing, harvesting, preserving and cooking with rhubarb. Get lots of tips for growing this easy perennial food plant plus delicious recipe ideas for both sweet and savory dishes.

This rhubarb guide is a part of a continuing series of produce Ultimate Guides where you can find all kinds of growing information and tips as well as delicious recipes, both fresh and preserved, for a specific fruit or vegetable. See more fruit and vegetable guides here.

Rhubarb is one of those edible plants that’s considered a vegetable, but used like a fruit – in fact a US court decided in the 1940s that it was a fruit for import regulations because that’s how it’s often used (source).

It’s probably considered a bit unusual or old-fashioned, but it has some great qualities and lends itself to some fantastic recipes, so I really recommend growing it.

One reason is that rhubarb is a perennial plant and once established in a place that it likes it’s pretty carefree, coming back every year with minimal care.

So you need a permanent place – a rhubarb patch – where it can happily live and provide you with some of the first fruits of the gardening season year after year.

Another reason is that rhubarb is such a versatile plant to cook with and preserve – it can become a chutney for savory foods, ice cream sauce, pie and cake filling, jam, cookie bars, drinks and more.

Even so, it is still a mystery to some because it’s not a normal thing we find regularly in our supermarkets.

I often get questions asking what to make with rhubarb or how to grow it, so I’m putting all the rhubarb growing information and recipes that I’ve collected into one ultimate rhubarb guide so you’ll have one place to come for rhubarb answers.

Did you know that rhubarb is a member of the buckwheat family? So weird, right? It also has good amounts of vitamins C, K, and the mineral magnesium as well as some fiber and protein.

We eat the stalks of a rhubarb plant and they are known to be quite tart, which is why many recipes call for quite a bit of sugar. I’ve found I can easily use less to get a nice sweet-tart flavor, so my recipes use less sweetener and many use a natural sweetener, too.

The large leaves of the plant are poisonous (I always feel sorry for the people who discovered stuff like this, don’t you?), so they should be composted after harvesting the stalks.

Rhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid – in addition to other compounds that may be bad for humans (see this article for more on this). Other vegetables have oxalic acid, too, like spinach, chard, broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts – only in smaller amounts which you can lower even further by blanching and draining the water.

However, you would need to eat a large amount of rhubarb leaves to be considered to be toxic, though small amounts may cause digestive distress.

According to the article linked above, in WWI Britain encouraged eating rhubarb leaves to help with food shortages and there were numerous illnesses and one death, which has not been reported with eating spinach and chard.

Based on this and other sources like this I will continue to advocate growing this lovely edible plant for it’s stems only and composting the leaves.

How to Harvest Rhubarb

To harvest individual stalks:

The easiest way to gather the stalks is to pull up from the base of the plant, twisting slightly as you pull.

Most will come out pretty quickly this way, but if some don’t, you can use a knife to cut a stalk off at the base, you just have to be careful not to cut anything you don’t plan on harvesting – which is why I prefer the pull-and-twist method.

Cut off the leaves and compost them.

When and how much to harvest:

I’ve read various, sometimes conflicting, methods for when and how much to harvest your rhubarb – from only picking 1/3 of the plant during a season to cutting all the stems at once for a one-time harvest, or only spring harvesting to an all-season harvest.

I aim for the middle, harvesting only the fattest stalks for about a two-month period, or until most of the new stalks are really looking thin. Every once in awhile, some stalks will look good again in the fall and I’ll harvest a few, but my main harvest is in the spring.

Red or Green Stalks?

I didn’t know until we moved into a new house with an established rhubarb patch that not all rhubarb varieties have red stalks. Some produce mostly green stalks with barely a hint of red.

The green stalked rhubarb is closer to the wild rhubarb, with newer varieties having been bred to be redder, like ‘crimson red’ and ‘valentine.’

I’ve cooked with both types and while there is no flavor difference, the food all looks better using red stalks. They make the jam pretty (it’s a dull brown color with green stalks) and produce wonderful red pockets in muffins and breads.

Green stalk rhubarb also tends to produce more flower stalks (some of the red varieties will not produce flowers at all), and when the flowers form, the stalks can be a bit dry and stringy.

However, the green stalk variety is hardier and easier to grow than the more popular red colored plants, so if you’re having problems getting rhubarb established, switching your variety may be an option for you.

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