Temp. home for rhubarb?

My mom gave me a couple of rhubarb starter plants on the weekend. My sfg is all planted except for one square that I was going to use for another basil plant.

I want to build more boxes, but it will not likely happen anytime soon. So I need a temporary spot for my new rhubarb plants. How invasive are they? If I do stick them in the extra square in my sfg will they be hard to remove in the spring when I have a new sfg box? My soil is really sandy here. So I worry they might not make it if I just stick them in the ground. I also worry that a few invasive weeds will come along with them when I relocate them next spring.

I would plant them in large pots for now. I got rhubarb last year and literally forgot to plant it. It survived a MN winter in the pot it came in! That way when you replant you aren't digging up and disturbing roots. As far as evasive, I think it is more an issue of just being BIG. I took a corner of soil outside my boxes and planted it, rather than taking up valuable SFG space.

My mother has grown Rhubarb for as long as I can remember in Bellevue Washington and I have grown it for a few years in California.

It is not an invasive plant at all. It has a large root system and will continue to build more plants from the central root. Every 4 or 5 years, we dig up the root in the winter when it is dormant and split into new plants.

The plant is large so I would not recommend putting it in a SFG. The leaves are about a foot square in size and it sort of resembles the leaves of the Zucchini. The only part you want to eat is the stalks as the rest is poisonous -- in fact you can make a insecticide from the leaves although I have never done so. You need to boil the leaves or something and can only use the pot for your insecticide from then on.

The Zucchini is a heavy feeder. I find that mine gets "hollow" if it doesn't get enough to eat. Also, in warmer climates even the red rhubarb has green stalks. According to what I read, it needs cool temps for the stalks to turn red.

Anyway, lucky you! Rhubarb is so yummy!