Hi, Carol. In southern Tennessee, rhubarb won’t be as healthy or robust as it would be if grown in an area with cooler, moist summers and winters with temperatures that freeze the soil. You can try growing in containers, but your rhubarb will likely be short lived.

Hi Andy,

You did well not to harvest any earlier, but the frost will kill off everything that remains: Harvest as much as you want, discard the leaves, and spread a layer of mulch around the base of the plant to help to protect the roots during winter. Thanks for writing!

Cut the rhubarb into small pieces (about 1-inch long) and lay them in one layer on a baking sheet. Put the baking sheet in the freezer and wait until rhubarb is frozen–a few hours. Remove baking sheet and pack rhubarb into freezer safe zip-close bags. If you are storing rhubarb for more than a few months, you will need to blanch it before freezing.

You can follow the guidelines above as to how many weeks to harvest–through end of summer, before the first frost, is usually fine. Schedule just a few weeks of harvest, then give the plant time to recover, especially for winter. For each plant, harvest only about one third of the stalks. Plants should be mature (at least 3 years old) before starting to fully harvest. Stalks should be firm, not soft. Rhubarb usually can tolerate temperatures in the low 30s, even upper 20s (degrees F), but can suffer damage below that. One has to be careful about rhubarb, because if the leaves suffer cold damage, the oxalic acid from the leaves may filter into the stalks, making them toxic as well. Signs of cold damage are blackened, shriveled, limp leaves and limp, mushy stalks. If you see any damage to either leaf or stalk, discard both leaf and stalk.

Victoria is variously described as the white, shaded with red, or speckled variety. Crimson Cherry, Red Cherry, MacDonald, and Ruby are among those that are reliably red. As for the wrong plant? This may be a better question for your source.

You might have a couple of things going on: 1) transplanting any plant causes a shock to its system. Think about it: It’s happy, has everything it needs, then it gets moved/uprooted/relocated to an entirely different place. There is an adjustment period. 2) Rhubarb peaks—reaches harvest stage—at about this time (late spring). So it was coming into its own, then it was moved and it has to shift its energy and attention to the new—er—digs. Some plants take a move harder then others. 3) About the soil: Nothing makes rhubarb happier than good-quality animal manure. If you do not have any in the mix, find a way to add/substitute it for what’s in there. Finally, rhubarb likes/needs sun. Water is important, but it needs to drain/run off (not sit in a puddle). Finally (again), the rhubarb is not terribly picky about pH (soil acidity); it should be no lower than 5 but is better at around 6.0 to 6.8. Even with all of this you may not have a crop this year but you certainly may have one next year.

We hope this helps. (Oh, rhubarb likes winter, too. So leave it out in the cold and snow!)

This might be a pest called the common stalk borer (Papaipema nebris). Eggs are laid on grasses and weeds in late summer and fall by a moth; in spring, the eggs hatch and larvae feed on grasses and weeds and other plants, sometimes moving over to rhubarb patches, as well as corn etc. Larvae are very active and move about between plants. They pupate in the soil around July and emerge as moths around August. Clear out any weeds surrounding your patch, and keep borders neat and lawn trimmed nearby to discourage them. To be sure of the pest ID, you might take a sample of the larva and photo of damage to your county’s Cooperative Extension service. For contact information, see http://www.almanac.com/content/cooperative-extension-services