Digging up dahlia tubers
Its officially winter and the weather’s gone really cold. Most of my flowering perennials have gone into hibernation including the dahlias. They stop growing, their flower buds shrink and dry off, the leaves start to yellow and mildew has started to grow on them.
Here’s my potted dahlias, yes I know they’re supposed to be grown in the grown but with limited space in my backyard I’d resorted to growing them in pots and they do okay considering. Plus its easier to maintain them like staking and tying up the floppy branches.
So this is what needs to be done to dahlias during winter; cut down the whole plants to the ground. Throw the cuttings into the compost bin, remove the stakes and get rid of all the ties that were used to tie them together.
Dig up the whole root ball, get rid of as much dirt as you can. Unless you want to propagate more plants next year you can keep the whole root ball intact. Store the whole thing upside down in a cool dry place. Reason for storing them upside down is because if you store them upright water that’s still remain in the stems can flow back into the root tubers and rot can occur which was what happened last year.
June 17th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
So, are you keeping them for next year? I think my dafodils gave up hope