Naekid, some rhubarb is naturally very red, others are green clear through. As long as you have a good stalk, go ahead and harvest it, regardless of its color. What happened is that your rhubarb was ready to harvest, didn't get harvested, and eventually just died back. Not all bad, though, as it had that much more time to put energy into the root system for next year. Give it a good heavy layer of manure or compost now and next year you should have big, healthy rhubarb, even if it is green instead of red. If it really bothers you, there's always red food coloring.
I made the switch to raised beds this year, and even though it was a horrid garden season in our area (PNW), I am very pleased with how well the raised beds worked. I'll continue to build more of them over the winter in prep for next year. I also plan to add lightweight frames with curtain sheers, tulle, or row cover stapled to them to set over the berries (bird protection) and cole crops (cabbage moth barrier), as well as hoops over the tomatoes and other hot weather crops (protection against both cold and rain, which brings on late blight). This year I lost nearly my whole tomato crop to late blight in Sept when the rains hit. I don't want that to happen again.
My raised beds are all different sizes, depending on what building supplies I had available at the time. Construction sites and businesses that put out their used pallets for free firewood are great sources for raised bed building supplies. You not only get a lot of lumber, but if you are careful pulling the nails out and straightening them, you even have the means to fasten your boxes together! I even got some of my lumber from the mark down racks at Lowes - got a couple of 2x10x12 boards that had a split down most of the board for a a total of $5. Put a little wood glue in the split, clamped it until dry, and added ends on the boards for a very nice raised bed. Have my Egyption walking onions and garlic in that bed.
I dig down to the subsoil between beds, throwing the top soil into the beds, then put down heavy layers of cardboard or feedsacks on the pathways for weed suppression. There are chip trucks that dump their extra chips in piles near here, so I go down there with my pickup and a scoop shovel and bring home all I want for the paths. I use soaker hoses throughout the beds and mulch with straw to keep down weeds and water evaporation.
Even though I had lousy fruit set on the cucurbits and tomatoes (too cold at night), the plants were lush and healthy, with lots of blossoms - they were happy with the beds, just not the weather. Green beans, both bush and pole, were very late, a lot of the seeds never germinated, and they didn't start setting beans until Sept. Corn was not in raised beds, plants were stunted and yield was almost nil. Potatoes were also not in raised beds and something burrowed under the roots (most likely moles looking for earthworms and grubs), killing the plants before I realized what happened. Next year they will be in a raised bed with hardware cloth on the bottom! Really, the only plants that really produced well were strawberries, raspberries, onions, garlic, peas and broccoli. However, I do believe we gardeners are the consummate optimists - as "next year" will always be better!
Right now I have a garden and orchard space fenced in that is about 78'x100', and have completed the raised beds in about 1/3 of it, if that, so it's going to be an ongoing project for quite a while. Gives me great exercise to do all the digging involved with getting the beds in shape, while saving me a ton of work weeding and watering the finished beds.
