Apparently, you can't kill rhubarb [View all]

[chowmama]

The Victory Garden is proceeding fairly well. The rabbits seem to be successfully excluded and the squirrels aren't too bad. They initially dug up a couple newly planted starts and one of the squash plants (the butternut) and one cabbage didn't survive. They didn't eat the plants, so I think they were just looking for grubs or something in the newly tilled earth. One of the little bastards took the first two jalapeno peppers, but it hasn't returned and I have more coming in, so it may have immediately regretted its life choices.

However, years ago, I planted 2 rhubarb plants which never died, but never thrived. Every year, I'd get a few stalks that got about pencil-thin, wilted, and fell over. I don't know if the soil was crap (probably would've been better if it had actually been crap), if it got too little water, or what. I didn't really bother to try to preserve them when the new garden got dug. I just figured I might someday buy new plants from the garden center. I did keep track of where the soil with the rhubarb roots ended up, but they got pretty broken up and I expected nothing from them.

Every chunk of root anywhere near the surface is producing shoots and I keep finding more. The leaves are pretty distinctive, so I know it's them. I'm up to 6 plants thriving in their new home. There'll be no rhubarb this year, but next year is (with reservations) looking good.

As long as it doesn't turn out to be burdock.

Now my main challenge is to identify the seedlings, as opposed to the weeds. I've finally seen some leaves that are definitely radish, so I can spend more time taking out similar plants that aren't radish.