Elaine, I don't think it is the cold that it the problem, it is the heat. I have planted it twice and the first time I made it to the 2nd summer with it. Maybe if you could protect it from the hot afternoon sun and give it plenty of water you could grow it. I think I have heard Dawn say that she grows it as an annual, so maybe she will chime in and tell us how she does it.

I have rhubarb in my garden, third year now which i started from seed from my grandfathers patch in Michigan, which is over fifty years old. The key in the summer is to use shade cloth, water plenty, and baby it. My patch, as small as it is right now, is also under about six inches of goat manure.

We were up in Michigan late May this year, and i brought back seventy five pounds of rhubarb.....

I have absolutely no luck with it here. I understand, it is the heat.

Moni

I sow seed in flats in the summer, put young plants in the ground in September (sometimes August), water them well to help them get established, mulch them and usually have them survive the winter even though they are small. Then, they grow in spring and I harvest it and use it before mid-summer....definitely before August. Even in morning sun and afternoon shade, I cannot get it through the early August heat. Our August weather the last few years has included highs in the 108-115 degree range and I can tell you for a fact that rhubarb doesn't like those temperatures. I have been growing it in amended clay and it is impossible to water the clay enough in summer. It might do better in sandy loam or well-amended sun.

My formerly Yankee, rhubarb-eating husband doesn't get nearly as much Rhubarb as he'd like from our garden, but since he is the only one who eats it.....what little he gets is all his....every last bite of it.

There was one time I kept some going for three years. I think it was 2004-2005-2006, which was a wet-dry-dry combination of years, but the heat wasn't insane like it has been the last few summers. I didn't raise those plants from seed. I bought the roots in the store in January when all the bulb type stuff arrived. I didn't start raising it from seed until I started treating it like an annual.

I might be able to get it through the summer by babying it more than I do, but we have a big garden and a big yard (acres) to mow and I am just one person, so nothing gets babied too much. There's just not enough time to baby stuff along.

Dawn

I never thought to grow it as an annual - that's interesting since everyone's plants back home have the story of being cut from their father's or grandfather's or great-grandfather's (such a nostalgic weed)!

We lucked out with pretty decent soil for Oklahoma and have a seep/underground spring that runs across our property into the woods to a cattle pond. I'm thinking if maybe I plant it at the edge of the woods near that seep and mulch it really well it might stay cool/wet enough to get through the summer.

As much as I love it, it seems downright wrong to grow it in the garden with the rest of the plants - everyone I knew had a patch of rhubarb, but it was always along the edge of the property or hidden in the woods somewhere!

Years ago, I planted some in a raised bed. It didn't thrive, but didn't completely die. I lifted the surviving plants and put them into a very large pot that had good soil and composted manure product added. They grew well there, but the stalks were thin and the plants were crowded. Next I divided the plants and replanted them into two large containers that sat in a partially shaded area of the garden. The next spring I had stalks large enough to harvest. The following spring, the plants were crowded again and the stalks were thin and weak. This spring, I divided the surviving plants and planted them in the ground in a partially shaded fenceline area. If this doesn't work, I'll toss in the towel. We grew up in Wisconsin and miss all the wonderful rhubarb we grew up with. The heat here in Oklahoma is tough on a lot of plants.

The last 2 or 3 years I've grown it in large containers (molasses cattle feed tubs that are roughly the size of whiskey half-barrel planters). In the late winter through early summer, I have the containers at the west end of the fenced-in veggie garden, where they get full sun until almost noon. They then are in heavily dappled shade after that. They've done really well in the containers, but at some point each summer they go dormant. I just leave them alone and water just enough to keep the soil in the containers moist. In the fall, they put out new growth. I move them into the unheated greenhouse sometime before it gets too terribly cold. I don't know if that step is necessary, but they stay leafed out in the greenhouse and make some good leaf growth in the winter because the greenhouse is warm during the day though often pretty cold (below freezing at times) at night.

So far, this container-grown rhubarb grows and produces great, so I no longer start new plants in fall and grow them as an annual because it no longer is necessary.

The plants in containers might do equally well if left outdoors all winter, but since I have a greenhouse, I figured why risk it.

I feel like my rhubarb plants likely would have drowned in May and June (25.5" of rain in May and at least 14" more in June) if in the ground, so was relieved that they were in containers.

Our weather swings from one extreme to another, not just hot to cold, but from drought to flooding....and, often, then back to drought all too quickly...so much that I find growing rhubarb in containers to be the most care-free method for me. I doubt I'll ever put it in the ground again. I stick a few begonias in the pots every spring so that there's something still in there when the rhubarb goes dormant. That way I don't look like an idiot watering seemingly-empty containers for the last half of the summer.