Gardenbuddies Magazine

404 File Not Found Sorry, the file you were looking for could not be found. It may have moved to a new location. Please use the navigation links at the top or search our forums. You will now be redirected to Gardenbuddies!

World Clock

Pacific Eastern Japan Finland Germany Australia UK

All times are GMT -8. The time now is 06:49 PM.
Vbulletin 3.7.4 Copyright ©2000 - 2008, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
SEO by vBSEO 3.2.0 Copyright ©2003 - 2008, Gardenbuddies.com

Contact Us - Gardenbuddies.com - Archive - Privacy Statement - Top

Caring For Dahlias

For the dahlia grower, fall means digging and storing dahlias, unless you are lucky enough to live in a frost free climate. It is like Christmas presents under ground, you never know how many tubers you will get.

Below are some clumps I dug and washed. Each clump has a tag with the name of the dahlia on it. The tag is tied to the stake when I plant and then is put with the clump after digging. It will get wrapped on the outside of each package of the dahlias. At the left front there is a tuber that has been partly cut off. This tuber is perfectly fine. The cut will heal over.

See all the tubers hanging from the main tuber on the left? I call them suckers. They are no good, they have no eyes. I cut them off and throw them away. For a tuber to have eyes it must come from the stock of the clump. They brown tuber in the middle of the clump is the mother tuber. A mother tuber is the one I planted last year. This one has rotted. Some mothers are completely gone in the fall. Some mothers just grow bigger and are solid. I save any of the good mothers, but I never wrap them with my good tubers. Mother tubers are more prone to rot. I use mine in the spring to take cuttings off of. And if that is the only tuber of that variety that I have I will even plant it.

After I have washed my tubers I put them in the green house to dry over night. Then I cut them next day.

This clump is upside down. See the white bumps? These are eyes. Not all tubers have eyes on the top of the clump. Many tubers have more than one eye.

Some tubers are pink. These are usually red or pink dahlias. But not all red or pink dahlias have pink tubers. One other thing is that the size of the tuber has nothing to do with the size of the dahlia bloom. Some AA (dinner plate) have very tiny tubers.

So that's a little info about dahlias. Hope that it helps some of you and maybe gets some of you interested in growing dahlias.

Written by Dahlianut

404 Page Not Found