garden under water, rhubarb turning yellow

[3forfree]

I have a small garden that has rhubarb and strawberries in it that is under water because of all the rain we've had in the past week.
the strawberries are doing fine, but the rhubarb leaves and stalks are turning yellow and drooping down into the water. Can it be saved?

 

[HeritageGoose13]

I don't know... if there were some way you could maybe dig even a small slope on the side of the garden for now, that might help with drainage? My first thought was to buy a bag of wood shavings (like you use in a chicken coop) and spread them out to soak up the water but I think that would affect the soil, so you might not want that.

 

[lazy gardener]

Is this the first and only time the garden has been under water? If it's a recurring problem, you'll either need to move the garden to higher ground, or install drainage around, and possibly in the garden, as well as move to a raised bed system. Your rhubarb may be moving into it's dormant period anyway. And, the root system may survive to come back next year. I'd recommend that when the flooding abates, you do some exploratory digging to see if the root system is rotting. If it isn't you should be ok next year. If it is, you may be able to salvage some sound roots, and can do some root cuttings, perhaps even potting them up to get a head start on a rhubarb bed in a more charitable spot next year.

 

[3forfree]

I moved three of the four rhubarb plants that were under water as I could get to them, lots of mud after the water went away. The three went to another garden and seem to be doing well, new growth on all of them so maybe they will survive. Today I was in the garden that was under water just looking around wondering what to do with it. I noticed down between the old dried up stalks some new growth, I'm going to leave this one where it is, hopefully we won't get as much rain as we had this spring, and it too will survive. I cut the old stalks down to where the new growth is, and I'll see what happens.

 

[3forfree]

Things are looking better. The rhubarb in the above picture is growing good after nearly drowning. I top dressed it with some compost, and it seems to be doing very good, I'm going to treat all 4 of my plants like they are new, and not pick any this year, letting the roots develop. The ones in my other garden have gotten quite large since relocating, color starting to come on the stalks, very tempting to take some.

 

[shortgrass]

It'll come back next spring we've had massive floods move asparagus beds 50 yards lol, and now they're all over the field, but pretty much all came back from rootstock, just took a year off from picking so it could recover

 

[3forfree]

rhubarb has made a remarkable recovery, the one in the above pic hasn't gotten as big as the one in this pic, this one is in another garden, I'm going to move it next spring to the new garden. thanks for the help.