I spent some time out in the garden today. It’s been so nice lately, summer has truly arrived!
Last year, I bought a small rhubarb plant, in the hopes that this year I would be able to begin harvesting it for pie making.
Unfortunately, between the too small planter I had it in, the darkness on our Renton deck, and gardener error, that plant died. Slowly, but steadily, one leaf, then the other, turned brown, curled up, and fell off. I was devastated.
I wasn’t going to try again, until I had an actual in the ground place to put it, but….
I bought a new one anyway. I decided that in our new place here in Milton it was more likely to get the sun it needed, and I was more prepared to know how to care for it. The scary thing was though, about a month after I bought it (and planted in a large planter, with plenty of sun) it started showing signs that it wanted to do the same thing! I watched in horror as one leaf turned brown, curled, and fell off, all the while trying basic things like moving it to a better location and monitoring it’s water intake.
Once that first leaf fell off though, I knew I would have to take more pro active steps. So I Googled it.
I quickly found that other people were having the same problem! The solution? Nitrogen.
And the funny thing was, I possessed the solution all along, having purchased a package of blood meal at the beginning of the year.
Anyway, that’s all been about 2 or 3 weeks now. I’ve been watching the plant for any new signs of browning. I happy to report nothing of the sort, and in fact, today I found this new bud of a leaf beginning to grow! I’m so happy the blood meal worked. I did a little happy dance on the spot, before grabbing my camera. I will probably be applying it every few months, because apparently (thanks Google) rhubarb likes nitrogen very, very much. Perhaps even more than I like baking with rhubarb itself!
