Better late than never

Wow!! gorgeous. Yes, I am finding that growing the same thing year after year gets kind of boring. Course, if I lose anything I would prefer it were something that I was about to replace anyway.

I will get out my fine measuring tools for the mix. lol. I brought in some 12x12x24" planter tubs to layer my tubers in. They will be on the bottom shelves of my two five shelf growing shelves in the garage where I can check on them. It does seem like I should over them though with saran or something to conserve some moisture. Thanks

Mary, how deep will you layer them in the pots? When I store them in the bags, some are not even completely covered by the mixture. I think the mixture is just to hold a little moisture. I put 6 or 8 tubers in the bag with 2 or 3 handfuls of the mixture, shake and let the mixture fall where it may. I don't think I would want them too deep so it would be easier to check on them occasionally. I once read where someone stored in straight potting soil and the tubers were a little too warm and started to sprout and grow during the winter. I don't know if that's true. May not be a problem if you keep them cold enough. I bought a couple of tubers this year from Tulip World. They came packed in peat moss. They were the worst looking, driest tubers I ever received but they grew like weeds. So what do I know? lol

lol. All good information. I will use the zip lock bag trick. easier to store that way and I can get to them easily on the lower shelves. Runs about 50F or so in the winter. Maybe even a little colder sometimes. On the floor by the front garage door will freeze a turkey. these would be up a few inches. Well, off to 'plant' some tubers. Oh, mine start sending out sprouts around March even in the garage.

Okay, gallon bags with several in them or quart bags. I put about 2.5 handfuls in a gallon bag then only about 3 tubers the size of my fist (small hand). I will send a picture next time.

Okay. Here is the bag of fungicide I shake and bake them in (well, shake anyway - already gave them the 1:9 bleach bath and let them dry), bags of soil, moss, vermiculite and the other stuff (CRS), drying rack, bags. the popsicle sticks have names on them. I can wrap the top of the bag around and tape it to confine the soil around the bulbs or is it enough to have the moisture and drying elements in the same bag, not necessarily covering them. OR just shake the bag out so the tubers are sort of on top of the soil.

When I add the soil mixture (vermiculite last year) to the bag with the tubers I don't take any pains to completely cover the tubers, although that might be good. I try to leave the top of the bag open and stand them upright in a cardboard box, sort of wedged together so they don't fall over. Being flimsy, the zip locs will try to roll over and close. That's why I check so often and try to keep the top open. When I say "open" I mean just so it doesn't seal. The danger is excess moisture can't escape. When I very lightly spray water during storage, I don't spray the soil, I spray the inside of the bag. If I still see moisture on the inside a couple of days later, I wipe it off with paper towels. There are probably dozens of ways to store and I only know what has worked for me. Two years ago I stored over 40 clumps (didn't divide until spring) and only lost two. This past fall my friends divided and then stored. I think we lost 2 or 3 out of 150-175 tubers.

Good info, thanks, Love, Love, Love the Dahlia's. The blooms last so long compared to other flowers. Love, Love, Love.

Thanks Dan. I didn't know if I should seal or not. I will open them and store them and spritz them as you explained. thanks so much for your help. Now, If I have just cut them right....

Vancouver. Hi pirl, remember this one? Not fully open but looking "gooder" every day. Thanks again.

My Hollyhill 6-in-1 Yellow finally bloomed. I love the color variations. I don't have one that is predominately red yet. These will fill out and be more frilly in a few days.

CG Coral is barely 4". I thought it would be a little bigger. The second one is Ludwig Helfert. The photo in the catalog was a brighter all-orange. Alpen Pauline is now 12" wide. Love it! The plant is only 2 1/2 '. Last one is Ruskin Andrea. Again, I was expecting a little bigger bloom. This one is about 4". With the late start I had, I'm pretty much pleased with what I can get. lol

the biggest I have is about 10". I can't imagine a stem that would hold a 12" bloom upright. Plus with the wet lately they are made heavier. Still Clearview Orca stays pretty upright, although the bloom is only about 6-7". they are all so beautiful but that Hollyhill 6-in-1 is amazing. Maybe I will give away my peonies and fill in those spots with dahlias. lol. NOT!

Dan - you've done far better with Vancouver than I. No blooms yet. Your Alpen Pauline is great though I am partial to the name Pauline, as in pirl (Pauline Isabelle Reid Loeffler), the late former neighbor in my former home who taught me how to garden. My blooms are the right sizes but the heights are way off from previous years. Beautiful colors and great shots. Love that soft salmon/peach color of CG Coral. Was that from Corralitos?

Mary - just send those excess peonies my way! LOL

Mary, those stems are the biggest I've ever seen. Maybe with the plant being so short, everything is compacted. lol I've had this Seattle dahlia for 5 or 6 years. The coloring has changed so much, I had to look on my chart to see what it was. Very little white and none of the peach coloring. It got off to a very slow start like most of my others and is still barely 12" tall. This Kelvin Floodlight is the biggest I've ever had. It's 8". I can hardly believe this many large blooms from a single tuber. Wish I had noticed the two ratty looking blooms before I snapped the photo.

Dan - I find dahlias do change color as the weather gets cooler.

Was Seattle a different color (than you had previously) right from the start?

Arlene, the CG Coral is from Clack's. I always make a list of the grower who sent each tuber in case there are any mishaps. This year I received nice healthy tubers from everyone I ordered from. Any problems this year were strictly weather related (or me).lol

Very pretty dahlia Arlene! What is the name of it? Which program do you use to get three pictures with dates? Great for illustrations.

Mary, you mentioned the stems on Alpen Pauline. Did you notice the stem in the upper left corner and the one by my hand? I had never noticed them in the picture until just now. Absolutely huge. Arlene, the Seattle just bloomed a few days ago, so there is still time for it to change. The cooler weather and the fewer hours of sunlight do have an effect on color and bloom size.

Sorry for the wrong guess, Dan. I just figured CG stood for Corralitos Gardens. I still like that color.

Carol - I use Picasa (free from Google) and I entered the dates on the collage. It's Blown Dry. It performed well that year until a storm with strong winds broke it off at the base.

Arlene, maybe you remember this one from a couple years ago. This dahlia is reputed to be Aloha. The first photo was made in August and the next two were made in October. These blooms were on three different stems. The white one is totally different in color and form, appearing more like a cactus type. I gave this tuber to an aunt in Virginia and the following year it was all white. Strangest one I've ever grown.

The CG may very well stand for Corralito's Gardens. I don't know for sure. I've seen quite a few dahlias that are sold by someone other than the ones who cultivated them. The Hollyhills are probably my favorites and the most distributed.

How odd! I do remember Aloha. I had that at the same time as Hawaii and got them confused constantly.

I'm sure you're right about CG distributing their dahlias to other places for sale. I found the Hollyhill dahlias more unusual that other places and really enjoyed them, especially England's Glory, pictured here.

Dan, I see the stem. It is about the same size as the 'trunks' if you will of many of my dahlias, while the stems on some like Vista Lindsay, Sweetness and LaLuna are extraordinarily long (12-16") and very strong. Can't hold up under constant wind and rain very well, but surprisingly strong.

I am starting to dig this morning. We had a hard frost, frozen water on the top of buckets and not just a thin skim. I do two at a time clean and cut, set to dry on racks with their name on a paper next to them. Of course, I still have the name written on many of them from you and Tod. I have maybe a dozen bags now (quarts and gallons) sitting open. Am just not sure about this. I think I over cut on the first several dahlias, which is why I did mine first from the past years. Now that I am starting on the new ones, I have a better idea of what to cut and save and what to pitch.

I have tulips to plant, along with the astilbe's and hosta from Arlene. Plus dig another hole for the last peony (whenever they arrive - 7 of them). I really want my garage back for my car. It is set up like an assemply line with a huge pile of dirt in the center which will go into the peony hills. Otherwise I would be planting them in frozen dirt. It will also dry out the soil as it has been there for over a week.

I really need some advice on cutting up this tuber. It is Neon Splendor and I just love it. You can see in the first picture the entire clump, with the original tuber to the right and one tuber down. The stamped name is showing. I see the collar below the stem, then this thing that doesn't look like a tuber, then five or six tubers growing from that.
#2 shows the original tuber more clearly and more tubers growing the from the collar immediately under the stem.
#3 shows the back side of the clump.
#4 shows another strange thing growing below the stem with several tubers growing from that.

Should I assume that the strange growths immediately beneath the stem and collar are an extension of the collar and that pieces of it might contain eyes for the tubers growing from it.? Or is it only the tubers growing from the collar immediately beneath the stem that are worth saving.

Thanks for any insight.

Wish I could be of some help to you, Mary, but I'm a total failure with the subject.

I've never seen a double-deck of tubers before. I don't know if that is an extension of the collar or not. I don't want to give bad advice but if it were me I would concentrate on the tubers on the top half. There appears to be eyes there. I would get as many as I could of the obvious tubers with eyes and then take some of the ones on the bottom with a piece of the collar (?) and hope for the best. As I mentioned before, my friends save all the tubers (except the skinny neck ones) and in the spring throw away the ones that don't sprout. You have anything to lose by trying except for a little space. I wish I could ask the folks who divided mine but they are out of town until sometime next month. I couldn't see any eyes on most of the ones they divided last year. But by spring I think 70-80% had eyed up.

Oh my. I just realized that you're in Ohio. I was thinking that you were the "Dan" in "Dan's Dahlias" a nursery in Washington. LOL. I just placed an order with them to thank 'them' for the tubers YOU sent this spring. That is funny. Anyway, I liked what I read about their nursery and how it started so any excuse to order more dahlias. Yeah. I think your take on it is best. Get some from the obvious collar below the stem, then take some from the odd whatever it is and make sure I note which are which just to see what comes of the latter. I do love an experiment. Thanks.

Our own psudan Dan is nicer than Dan's Dahlias! They don't send boxes of tubers for postage!

I could be arrested for trying to impersonate a dahlia nursery man. lol I'm still flying by the-seat-of-my-pants but hopefully learning a little as I go. Dahlias can be very weird. I was always told you "MUST" have a piece of the tuber collar attached in order to have a viable plant that will produce a flower. You may have seen a question I asked last spring (with a photo) about sprouts coming only from the stem area. I planted the tuber anyway and it produced a plant with a few blooms and a big clump of tubers when it was dug. The photos I posted a couple of days ago of Kelvin Floodlight are the results this year of that "collarless" tuber from a year ago. So, who really knows??

Too true. Well, I meant well. And now I have some (more) new ones:
NTAC Eileen, Edna C, Tyler James, Show-N-Tell, Angel's Dust, NTAC Patrica, ---

Dan, I cut up Neon Splendor as you suggested. I am sure to get some good ones and if that weird thing turns out to be part of the collar, then I will be neck (no pun intended) deep in plants. It's like buying tickets to a lottery and waiting months to see if (how many) win.

Thanks for the kind words, Arlene, but I'm not really all that nice. In fact, I try to do my "good deed for the day" early in the morning so I can be "mean" the rest of the day. LOL Thanks.

It reminds me of the prayer about "God, I have been really good. I have not cussed or been mean to anyone. I have not stolen or envied or any of that bad stuff today. And when I get out of bed I will strive to continue on that good path.

Dan - I don't believe you at all. You're a tease!

Curmudgeon. that is the work for me. "Mean' is to, well, mean. But being curmudgeonly has the flavor of something that is okay because of age and experience.

Canby Centennial and Goshen Calico starting to open. Should look nice in a few more days. I just got back from my morning walk/jog. I hadn't gone far and had already seen about 30 deer. I talked to a homeowner who's property abuts the park. He showed me a flower bed that was probably 4' x 20' that he said was crammed full of day lilies this spring. The only thing left was mulch. Not even a stem left. His hosta was eaten almost to the ground. I felt bad and told him I would bring him some dahlia tubers next spring. It's getting ridiculous. I wish I could have gotten a better photo of the two bucks. My camera only has a 3x zoom. They are both huge. I call them "Edward Scissorhorns #1 and #2". Another huge one hangs around on the other side of the woods. The poor gardeners haven't got a chance.

I can see where the bucks have stripped the trees. Our moose do the same. My neighbor just installed an electrified fence (said it would knock a moose clear in the air.) to protect his two little maple trees. Only problem is we live in a cul de sac with lots of little children. It is rather sheltered but runs parallel to his walkway. Kids don't usually go to his house, but who knows. He pas posted it and had his wife send emails to all the neighborhood people. I don't think I agree with him. Damien says a moose fence would work just as well, but you have to make it lower enough also to keep the babies out.

I use plantskydd and assuming I am bright enough to get it on in time it seems to work very well. Kind of spendy though.

I am in step two on my dahlias having dug, cut up, washed yesterday. I am dipping in bleach today, then in a day or so into fungicide and the bags. I have managed to loose track of only three tubers. lost the label (piece of paper next to each group). Only one type per bag. Come spring as they show sprouts I will plant those and put a stick in each pot. Trying REALLY hard to be orderly about this.

I really like Goshen Calico. Nonette is very similar. And I cracked up at your names for the big dear. How incredibly appropriate.

Canby Centennial is a great color. I love when dahlias look hand painted. I'm eager to see my Goshen Calico - twice as curious to see where I planted it. Generally I take photos as I plant but I guess I forgot in spring.

I use "i must garden" deer spray and it does work but those sneaky deer must sense every bit of new growth and many of my roses have no new foliage (that was there yesterday) and no buds. When I planted a Burgundy Iceberg last month I doused it with the deer spray (smells nice and minty) and kept spraying it since it has one bud that did open and so far the deer haven't bothered it but I can see their footsteps in the garden.

I despise the deer and don't like the people who feel the humans are wrong and the deer should have the run of our well tended properties and vegetable gardens.

You and DH would get on great. He really despises those who snivel "but the moose were here first." I suspect he would as soon put a load of buckshot in their rears as in the moose. Usually those people have no gardens, and maybe not even homes, just condos. Where they can view the moose from up high.

The truth for this area is that the deer were not here first. I met a man who hunted with his father, right here in Southold, many years ago and they never saw a deer. Now there are herds of 20 and 30 ruining gardens and wreaking havoc with the farmers. They lose millions of dollars in crops and yet no action is taken. It's always - "We'll take it under advisement". That's short for: We won't do a thing because we'll get more votes from the deer lovers.

I talked to a "they were here first" lady in the park last week. I told her the mosquitoes and cockroaches were here first, too. I asked if she did any gardening. She said no and that they had moved into a condo because they didn't even like to mow grass or do any yard work. I suppose that would explain a lot. I just read an article in our newspaper where the local police had recently shot 5 deer suspected of having EHD ( epizootic hemorrhagic disease). The deer is bitten by a tiny midge carrying the virus and is infected within 24 hours. The deer normally die with 5-10 days. I spoke with someone from the Pa. Game Commission and he said the deer become very lethargic, wander aimlessly and foam and bleed from the mouth. There were 8 found in an area I hunt in Pa. and some in the adjoining counties directly East and South of us. Many cases of EHD were found in Southern Ohio and Pa. last year. A freeze will kill the midges. I googled EHD and saw that it was found in New Jersey and Michigan, too. Not found to be contagious but who knows?