Three Junes ago when I first took possession of my community garden plot, my parents sent me a gardenwarming present in the mail. The small, rectangular package, about the size of two shoe boxes side by side, was shipped by 2-day service. Its contents must have been important, because they never send packages that way. When I opened the box, what greeted me was a bit of a surprise: Rhubarb. Not ruby-red stalks of the sourly delicious stuff, but its roots. The mass, sans leaves and greenery, stared up at me with its newborn kitten-faced gnarliness. I was overjoyed.

My parents knew rhubarb was my favorite fruity pie maker, and graciously uprooted one of their many plants that have been in their garden for 50-plus years so that I could start a rhubarb legacy of my own. Not really knowing what to do with the root ball, I chopped it into quarters and planted each, crowns just peeking above the ground, into the four corners of my 8-by-18-foot community plot.

Giant, monster rhubarb

Three seasons later, my gnarly little root balls have turned into monstrous garden denizens. What have I done to create these plants, each of which ends the season at about 4 feet wide?

Absolutely nothing. No fertilizer, no tenderness (I am constantly stepping on their in-the-way leaves), no special watering regime. I may have added a handful of compost into each hole when I planted them. That’s it. I harvest about one-third of the plant’s stalks, and only during the month of June, as I’ve found that pies and sauces made from rhubarb harvested at other times has a not-so-good consequence.

At the end of last season while I assessed my garden’s performance, I realized I didn’t need that much rhubarb. In fact, I still have six pies worth of rhubarb in my freezer. I was going to do it—I was going to remove two of my four rhubarb plants come spring.

Here to stay

A late winter and some travel didn’t get me into the garden until April 12. Even though it was still chilly, each rhubarb plant had leaves unfurling about six to eight inches about the ground. I wrestled with one plant, removing the entire root ball. After tackling the removal of a group of steadfast blue flag iris (another Herculean effort), I decided to come back another day for the second rhubarb.

Three weeks later, the rhubarb is still there, thanking its massive root ball for providing it with the energy to grow by leaps and bounds. On my next visit to the garden, the intended plant was already too large to remove. And there the plant will stay. For now. I may be a bit more aggressive in removing its leaves this summer, starving it, if you will, so the plant is not so strong next spring.

What lesson have I learned from my rhubarb? That I should pluck out my volunteer sunflowers now, even though they are still adorably just two inches tall.