Dahlias: Dahlias: Spring 2015, 2 by muskokabill

muskokabill wrote:
psudan, some attempted answers to your questions. Sorry if the answer's too long!

1. After digging in the fall it's usually several days and sometimes 2-3 weeks before I get round to dividing. They sit on trays in a coolish room. Then I divide one clump at a time, dip the cut surfaces in powdered sulfur and wrap immediately. By then of course they're perfectly air-dry. I've included a pic of some wrapped tubers.
2. The temp in my storage room is about 50 degrees all winter - I'm blessed to have built in a cold-storage area when I reworked the basement years ago.
3. This year I unwrapped them about 8 weeks before anticipated planting day. 6 weeks would have been smarter, but I was impatient. There's a pic of a typical group right after unwrapping.
4. The I do something a bit unconventional. Usually half to two thirds have no visible growth yet, so I put all the tubers of one variety in a ziploc bag, drip maybe a dozen drops of water into the bag and seal it. Left in a warm room, the bag becomes a miniature moist greenhouse with a bit of moisture even condensing on the inside. Surprisingly, they don't rot. Not surprisingly, they bud out - after two weeks around 80% are showing buds. I included a pic of one of those bags.
5. That's when I begin the process of potting them up if the tubers are compact or laying them in trays of very slightly moistened topsoil if the tubers are big. I'll keep them indoors as long as I can (under makeshift lights as they grow) and then when they're at risk of going all leggy move them out to simple coldframes in the garden. They'll go in the ground just before the end of May.
6. I don't feel any huge rush to pot them as soon as I unwrap them. They're just the same as tubers I've bought - I aim to get them into soil soon after they arrive but am relaxed about the timing if events conspire against me.
7. And one last comment in response to some previous posters - if a tuber's too big I cut off a good chunk or even most of the tuber to make it fit my pot. (Remember the Greek myth of Procrustes' bed, where guests who were too tall were amputated until they fit!) I've never found it do any harm - the tuber's job is essentially done by this point, as its responsibility is to deliver the tuber to the next season in a viable condition.

Hope this answers your questions. And CHEERS! - today I found the year's first snowdrops peeking out from the remaining snow. Winter is officially yesterday.