It was finely time to move the 50 plus rhubarb babies out of the indoor winter plant setups to their outdoor cold frame!

Last year i tried to take the easy way and ordered in a bulk buy on rhubarb starts, and boy did i get a poor mailing, in their tiny 3 inch pots they were fragile and poorly, i babied them along and planted them into what was to be my new BIG rhubarb row for farmgate sales..

This spring after the drought, five remain alive, i didn’t even think we would have that many to be honest left so that was nice to find, i was not going to waste my money on ordering in more this year and so i ordered in Canada Ruby Red Rhubarb seeds as my own seed could be a mix of upward of four to six types i have here on the farm an i wanted to be able to sell both Farmgal mix genes rhubarb but also when the time comes i want a popular named type to offer up and despite there being better rhubarbs, here the number one seller is still Canadian Ruby Red Rhubarb.

Another new red rhubarb introduced from Canada. The stalks are intensely red as the name implies—even the inside of the stalk is red. Rhubarb sauce made from Ruby is as red as strawberry sauce. The skin is so tender it cam be cooked with the stalk. Source : The 1944 book of selected planting stock – Fruit trees, berry bushes, ornamentals, Andrews Nursery Company, Faribault, Minnesota, 1944

Fat Cat, Pitter Pat and with our other farm cats are always happy to help, they are great support indeed LOL Miss Fancy is also always there, at a full grown up young farm dog, she came in at a big old whopping 12.5 pounds at last vet check which makes her smaller then all the male farm cats but bigger then the females.

I had gotten ‘tree seedling pots” that at 3 by 4 by 8 inches, and this proved to be a wonderful thing, so much bigger root system and while they were very much ready to be potted up to the next size, i am very pleased with how this worked for them

They came out in a beautiful solid cube to be transplanted into the nursery cold frame bed, i will do a count on what is needed in the Farmgate Park Garden and the rest will be potted up and put up for sale

As i know that its very possible a few of these will end up for sale, i made sure that they were placed into brand new potting up soil in the strawbale Cold frame, which as you can see in its microclimate is a great place for the purrpots to bake in the early spring sun.

The rest of the space in this cold frame is filled with 1 gallon pots with a number of different seeds to start for both eating and transplanting in the future

By choosing to start my own rhubarb, i will be able to compare all the different plants for type, taste, brix sugar content and will be able to both fill the bed and keep my current mature plants production available to me this year and beyond.

Splitting of plants is awesome but it does set them back and i will need all the rhubarb i can harvest this year as a way to add filler to the smaller fruits, its a canning stock up year. How many rhubarb plants do you have?