Now that my veg patch is four seasons old, I’ve found myself reflecting on the decisions I made when I set it up. Some of those choices need to be addressed, or even undone. The wire fence that keeps wildlife from grazing on my crops is buckling and falling down. Two of the perennial beds spend most of the year in the shade of a willow tree and, as a result, some of the plants there have failed to thrive. And, while some crops are doing well, if I want them to continue flourishing it’s time for me to act.
One such plant is my very handsome rhubarb that has been going from strength to strength, year on year. It’s doing so well that its increasing numbers of stems, ever-widening crown (the section of the root that joins the stems together) and enormous, crinkled leaves are pushing over my aforementioned fence. Now it’s definitively autumn and rhubarb is in a state of dormancy, it’s a good time to divide it.
Rhubarb tires after four or five years, causing the quality of the stems to deteriorate. Making new plants through division will provide me with vigorous new stalks.
Dividing rhubarb – which is a process that is simultaneously quite dramatic yet relatively straightforward to execute – is an example of vegetative propagation, where a new plant is created by removing a segment of a parent plant. When you do this you create a genetic clone, as opposed to the more common reproductive process of saving seeds, which are the result of two parent plants creating the next generation of plants through pollination and fertilisation.
To divide a rhubarb plant, you have to unearth the entire thing with some careful digging to ensure you excavate the crown without damaging it (so if the ground is dry, water your plant a few days before the big move). Use a garden spade or fork to dig around your rhubarb to bring it above ground (and don’t worry if a few roots get chopped off in the process).
With your spade or an old bread knife, chop the crown into sections, ensuring each segment has a substantial chunk of the root system as well as a growth point or two intact, and either pop them into their new position straight away or pot them into large compost-filled containers, making sure the crown is level with the soil surface. Segments taken from the outside of the crown will do better than older parts taken from the centre.
While it is possible to grow rhubarb from seed, it takes far longer for the resulting plants to produce stems ready for harvest, whereas divided crowns need only a year or so to get established before you can start picking from them. If, like me, you have one rhubarb plant to divide, next season will be rhubarb-less but the future will be filled with rhubarb crumble.
