How to Divide French Tarragon Plants

French tarragon tastes best when freshly picked from one's own garden, which is exactly why savvy gardening cooks enjoy growing this culinary herb. You can grow French tarragon from plant divisions or cuttings. For optimum health, plants must be divided at least every three years. Follow these steps.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Pointed garden shovel or digging spade
• Garden shears or nippers
• Pail or basin containing water
• Patience

Dig

1. Prepare new containers of growing medium or a fresh bed to receive the plant divisions you'll be creating. For new garden beds, double digging is always the preferred method.

2. Cut a circle at least eighteen inches in diameter around each tarragon plant using a pointed shovel or digging spade. For best results, aim each cut at a vertical angle and push down to a depth of at least four inches.

3. Dig the perimeter of your circle again, this time inserting your shovel or spade at a 45-degree angle inward toward the center of the plant, and forcing its handle downward. This action will unearth the root mass of the plant.

4. Slide both hands underneath the bottom of this clump of dirt and lift. As it moves upward, much of the soil clinging to the root mass will fall away and back into the hole.

5. Continue to support the plant from underneath its roots with one hand while using the other to separate out excess earth, sod, weeds or pebbles. These, too, can drop back into the hole.

Divide

6. Take your newly naked French tarragon plant to a place where you can examine and prune it.

7. Remove any old growth from the plant using nippers or shears. Old growth will be brown and dry.

8. Cut new, green growth down to a height of no more than three inches. Doing so will allow your divisions to concentrate energy on root growth--not leaf growth--while attempting to establish themselves after replanting. Be sure to save your clipped tops for drying or fresh use!

9. Untangle the root mass slowly and patiently. Unlike most other types of rhizomes, French tarragon balks at rough handling during division and will reward ruffians by failing to thrive after being replanted.

10. Count your divisions. Each separated piece of root with an active stem is considered a division.
    
    

Plant Divisions

11. Select your healthiest, most vigorous divisions for replanting. Omit this step if garden space is abundant and there's room for every division you get.

12. Place each division's root briefly in your container of water. This will remove any lingering debris and also serve to slake the traumatized plant's thirst.

13. Plant divisions at a depth of one inch, two feet apart.

14. Mound soil enough to support each stem and "mud in" divisions by watering thoroughly.

15. Cross your fingers and look forward to harvesting top cuttings in 8-10 weeks.

Tips & Warnings

• Make sure to put divisions into well-drained, sandy loam, or place a layer of gravel in the bottom of a container. This plant does poorly and is susceptible to root rot in heavy soil.
• French tarragon enjoys a side dressing with higher concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus, as found in potato fertilizers.
• Don't be impatient untangling French tarragon roots and don't hack them apart as you might with other rhizomes. If you haven't got the patience to divide carefully, you may as well buy new plants, throw the old ones on the compost heap and be done with it quickly.