rhubarb crowns wanted (within 1-2 hours of Minneapolis/St Paul, MN USA)

The woods is overgrown with poison Ivy, and I consider rhubarb my favorite vegitable. Does anyone have advice on how to get a lot of crowns on the cheap to propagate an acre of understory with rhubab plants to have it all covered with crowns? People try to tell me that "man can not live on rhubarb alone", but that's a lie.

Seeds
It may take a couple of years before you can harvest but it also gives you a larger range of varieties. They are actually pretty easy to raise.,

Dorothy Pohorelow wrote:Seeds
It may take a couple of years before you can harvest but it also gives you a larger range of varieties. They are actually pretty easy to raise.,

I know I could do it that way, but takes too long.

I've only inherited some rhubarb when we bought this house. It's fine, but not my love. My impression is that people regularly lift and divide the crowns as part of their maintenance. If that's the case, you ought to have a lot of them available from your neighbors. Join a local online gardening group and put out the call. And I'm two hours north of you, you could come do that work on my two big rhubarb plants, but I don't think what you'd get out of it is worth the drive.

If I were you I'd be buying in as much seed as I could and starting them right NOW. It will probably work out faster than waiting until you find enough crowns to plant that much.

I've grown them from seed and it seemed like you'd have a modest sized plant on year two.  They sprouted very nicely with my neglectful method of starting seeds.  Maybe a 70% success rate.  Splitting a mature plant would save you at least a year on each plant.

But...  You'd need maybe a thousand plants to cover an acre.  I'd say it's impractical to get that many crowns.

And I believe rhubarb likes full sun.  Depending on how shady your woods are, rhubarb might not outcompete the ivy.