Hi! I came across this forum while looking into KhangaRhu Rhubarb. Seems like this variety wasnt successful, does anyone have a variety that can be grown in East Tn? Some of the farmers market sell stalks, but im not sure how theyre growing it here.
Thank you in advance!
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its not going to be easy in your humid warm climate. even in partial shade the humidity eventually gets them. some folks on here from down south have resorted to grow it in pots and bring those pots in for the summer. putting them back out once day temps drop to the mid 70’s. over 80 they wither and die esp. with the high humidity. root rot gets them. here in the north they grow like weeds. each patch i have is 4ft high by 5ft. wide. i grow canada red from hartmanns nursery. very productive.
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Our Victoria seems to enjoy outdoor planter life. And temps have been 80-90 for a while now. Even the plant the 6 year old broke is growing back.
I’m in 7B (Arlington, VA) and had a nice patch of Victoria that I kept alive for about 5 years and had adequate harvests from. They never get super big and you sort of take what you can get in warmer zones. Victoria is known to be one of the better ones for surviving in the heat and is more of a strain than a variety since it is usually seed-grown. So there will always be some variability. Before that, I had bought a couple of varieties that sounded good, but they would last a year of struggling and then disappear.
During a really dry summer a couple years back my patch died out and I now have some new Victoria (left) and one German Red Wine (right) that I grew from seed. They flowered (Rhubarb almost always do here) and this time I let them with the hope of collecting seed. Probably a bad idea since it is hard on the plants and it is hard enough to keep them alive around here, but I liked the idea of trying to grow a bunch out and see if any prove to be extra hardy in my zone.
Now my question is when can I cut the seed heads and still have viable seed. I don’t want to make these struggle in the heat more than they need to, so hoping I can harvest the seed soon and let them get back to vegetative growth.
I’ve always topped with compost or composted manure, then mulched, which seems to keep their roots a bit cooler. Mine also get shade from late afternoon on.
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I gave up trying to grow it in Nashville. It’s not the heat that that kills them, it is the root rot. In my typical clay soil they would die of root rot mid summer. The best I did was in a plot of very sandy soil and they bore great for two years the second year late summer they started wilting and the roots simply rotted away. Once the root rot bacteria or fungus was in the soil replants would die with in a couple months.
We grew it in North Dakota and we got hot dry summers where the plants would dry up but they wouldn’t rot because the moisture didn’t come until fall and the soil was cool by then. The crowns would survive.
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