[bitterwort]

I'm not in the South and don't have trouble growing rhubarb in Minnesota, but I seem to recall a thread from many years back in which a woman from Texas or Georgia grew rhubarb in a large pot and kept it successfully from year to year by persuading a friend who owned a meat locker to keep it there in the winter months. I don't recall whether it was in a walk-in cooler or walk-in freezer, but she reported that it gave the rhubarb its required cold period.