My whole rhubarb patch is only 3 years old, planted from divided crowns and has done really well for me. The problem with this section however is that the rhubarb stalks are coming up just the thickness of a pencil. All the other crowns in the same patch, with the same treatment, are nice fat buds just waiting on the surface of the soil. I'm sure I read about some sort of rhubarb virus or disease which causes spindly stalks like this. From memory I don't think there is any cure other than to dig it up and start afresh. On searching the internet most informations seems to indicate that rhubarb is fairly problem free apart from crown rot (which this is not). Does this seem familiar to anyone?