Digging, Dividing, and Storing Dahlia Tubers for Winter Dahlia Tuber Care in the Cut Flower Garden

hey everybody what's up and welcome to the Garden um today we are you know it's time for the dalas to come out we had these beautiful gorgeous dalas we had dinner plates and ball dalas and decorative ones and they were stunning and we loved them but of course you know everything that's good cannot last so uh we had our Frost well technically we had our freeze we just skipped the frost and jumped right to the freeze and now that we've had this freeze everything has started to die um which is a good thing in terms of our you know digging our dalas and storing them for the winter so that we can save them and plant them again in the spring and start this whole beautiful process over again which you know of course will be awesome I'm always excited to start digging the tubers in the fall because I'm always eager to see how many new tubers the plants have made and how I can divide them and how I can grow um my stores of dalas and I think as you see this video and as you begin to you know watch me divide the tubers you can see how once you start collecting Dalia tubers they multiply very very quickly uh when they're grown under ideal conditions and of course you know some plants some varieties of dalas will make more tubous than others you'll see that as well uh but before we can start digging we want to make sure that a freeze has thoroughly killed these plants back and that the plants have turned just a gross black color um you can see my leaves and my stems and everything have been thoroughly affected by the frost and freeze and once that happens and turned this black color I'm just going to go through with my pair of garden Snips and I am going to trim this top growth off I'm going to leave about I'd say about 6 to 8 in of stem left in the garden just so I can easily see where the tubers actually are you know in the planting I should also mention that if you are planning to save your tubers of course um you know you want to make sure before the frost hits you want to make sure that they are labeled very very well because you know once the frost comes all the flowers are wiped out and everything you're not going to be able to tell which variety is which and and you know I learned that from experience myself the first year I grew dalas I didn't have any labels I didn't know what anything was I should also mention uh that I am here in Kentucky I'm in zone 6b7 and dalas are technically not Hardy to my zone so I cannot leave them in the ground over winter however several growing zones you can just leave them in the ground over winter and they will return so it will be up to you to kind of do that research and decide which method is right for you um in the past I've had Dalia's return ones that I've accidentally left left in the ground while I was digging I've had them return with no protection I think in the future I would like to experiment more with leaving the Dal tubers in the ground here in my zone but for now um I have a very small garden with limited space so I'm just going to go ahead and dig all these tubers up so that I can plant my tulip bulbs where these tubers are because um you know fall is here and I've got to get a move on I've got to make sure that everything is running smooth as the winter time approaches I'm not looking forward to cold weather that's for sure anyway uh after I've cut all these stems back to about uh 6 to 8 in I am just going to remove all of this foliage from the garden next comes a little bit of a waiting game I like to wait about a week after I've cut the stems the main reason for waiting a week a lot of people suggest that this waiting period allows the eyes on the tubers to really start to develop um I don't think it's absolutely necessary but I think it is a good practice especially if you are going to consider dividing the tubers in the fall like I'm am going to be dividing these tubers in the fall of course you can divide the tubers in the springtime as well uh but I like to just go ahead and get it done that way when spring does come I'll be ready to plant so after we have cut those back and allowed for our ample time to pass uh next it's time to start digging the two tubers now a lot of people use you know Garden forks and things I don't have a garden Fork I will just go ahead and be totally honest with you guys so I'm using a shovel a shovel is not the ideal Implement for this job simply because I have sliced more tubers in half then I can even count um but you know we're just going to go ahead and go with it anyway um what I like to do is I like to get my shovel about 8 in from the stem of the plant and I find that this is generally a safe disc depending on variety uh sometimes I slice through the tuber on especially big varieties but most of them this is a pretty safe distance all I'm going to do is I'm just going to work the shovel down into the ground and gently lift up this tuber out of the ground it really is that simple and as you can see it came out of the ground great um this spot in the yard is really well amended anyway with a lot of good compost uh rather than my heavy clay that I get a lot of times and uh once I get that out of the ground all I'm going to do is just do my best to knock off as much of that dirt as possible and I am going to just you know store it over over here away in my wheelbarrow for now and I'm going to continue moving down the line and you know digging tubers I have about uh I want to say 200 tubers to dig different plant clusters to dig as I dug them I found that some of them had completely withered way um and that's probably my fault just because I planted the tubers so close because I was trying to save space so some of them did wither away which I was disappointed about so I have kind of a list of Replacements that I need to buy for next year uh but overall we had a really really good amount of tubers to harvest um you can see here in this wheelbarrow this is just the first day that I um started to dig the tubers I did this over a two-day period it wasn't it didn't really take long per it's just you know a matter of finding the time and I did want to make sure to get this done as soon as possible here because we had just like a solid week of nice beautiful weather and I know in the fall that the weather can change in an instant and it can be cold and rainy and miserable so when it comes to digging my Dalia tubers I really really want to make certain that I am you know kind of planning ahead now once I have all these tubers in my wheelbarrow all I'm going to do is I am going to rinse them off for the garden hose the reason I put them in the wheelbarrow is cu I don't like I don't like wasting water it's you know I try to make everything as um efficient as possible when I'm cleaning these tubers I'm going to clean these tubers and I'm going to set them out in the yard and I am going to let them dry for a day um you know no freezing temperatures tonight make sure there's no freezing temperatures forecast I don't set them on concrete it seems like the concrete really really dries them out so I don't don't do it uh there but I just set them out in the yard for about a day and then once that happens then once they've been out uh usually the next day I will go through and I will start looking for eyes and kind of dividing them up now if you've never divided Dalia tubers before it can be totally just confusing and um don't worry when in doubt you can always just plant the clump it's not a big deal there's several ways to do this if you have more experience um I seriously doubt you need my video to help you because I I'm not the most experienced Alia grower that's for sure I'm very much a learning all the time here on this channel uh what I personally like to do is once these tubers are clean I like to snip off that top stem I want to snip it off as close to the base of these tubers as possible um now we do not want to cut any of the necks of the tubers this is very important okay do not cut the necks of the tubers in order to grow and in order to have an eye that tuber needs to be attached to that kind of stem base that we have that connects all the tubers together it needs a piece of that okay if you cut the neck of the tuber it's not going to grow so I'm going to just get rid of the main stock the tall stock that we left on there because that can promote rot you know water can get in there can cause rot in storage it's just we don't want it there also I'm going to trim the kind of scraggly ends of the tubers I'm going to go ahead and cut those off as well um again we're not cutting large portions of the tubers we're just kind of trimming things up making things nice it's also important that when you are dividing your tubers you need to be cleaning your tools okay the last thing I want to do is introduce viruses to all my tubers I mean I did I think I did a pretty good job of you know kind of checking my plants and making sure everything looked as it should uh but even so I'm sure there's some virus in my dalas it's just it's inevitable especially you know when you buy them from a bunch of different sources and wholesalers and things it's just inevitable it's probably unavoidable honestly I don't know enough about it but I do know that you need to be cleaning the tools so I do have a bleach solution to clean my tools as I am doing this between each um different variety of tubers if you want more information of that you can check out the American Dalia Society website because uh that's kind of the guidelines that I went by in learning to clean my tubers I know I'm rambling but um it's important it's important to know so I've clean so I've cut off that stem and I've cleaned off the kind of scraggly bits at the end of each tuber the kind of I guess Roots if I can see an eye on the tuber what I'm going to do is I'm just going to go ahead and separate it from the main Clump and make an individual tuber um if I I can't see any of the eyes what I like to do is just kind of go ahead and cut the tuber in half you can see when I cut these tubers in half again I am going through the center of where that stem used to be I'm not cutting them you know horizontally um cutting I'm making a vertical cut where that stem used to be we need that top part of the tuber I hope that I am being clear I hope I am making sense I doing my best uh to make sense with this but um it really was something I struggled with when I first learned how to do it because it seemed like no matter what I read or what I watched there wasn't enough information for me to understand it um so hopefully I'm being clear so after I've gone through and divided all of my tubers all I'm going to do is wash them one last time get any of the dirt and grime off you know um cuz you know soil can cause rot as well uh just want to get those as clean as possible some people choose to do like a fungicide dip I personally don't do that so I can't speak as to whether or not that will impact how our tubers store or anything after they have been washed a final time I do lay them out just once again usually one to two days just to get most of that moisture kind of just dry them out just a little bit from our last wash and then it is going to be time to store them what I like to do personally there are tons of different ways to store these uh first and foremost you want to find a place that is cool but does not freeze obviously I usually store mine in my basement now my basement is not the ideal um you know place it's a little bit warm it's a heated basement but uh I store them in a dark closet down there what I like to do personally is I get a garbage bag and I fill that garbage bag with vermiculite coarse vermiculite so I'll put vermiculite in and then a layer of tubers and then more vermiculite and then more tubers um this is not really ideal I don't think uh because I do store them all together and you probably shouldn't do that because um of course if one tuber starts to Rite that can very quickly spread to other tubers so I think most people tend to wrap each variety individually which is something uh to consider again I am not an expert I am just sharing with you what I do so I'm sure the process could also be done with individual bag or maybe um boxes I know some people like to use airtight containers I personally don't use an airtight container um when I put my tubers into the bag I just leave that bag open uh leaving the bag open I feel like just lets a little bit of air circulate and it's easier to go into the basement and check on the tubers during the winter I make sure to check the tubers about once a month and just kind of dig around in the bag make sure that nothing is rotting make sure everything looks good and um really make make adjustments from there some people use Moss to store tubers I've used moss in the past and I found that it really really dried out my tubers so I haven't used that for a couple Seasons it really just depends on your own preferences I'm sure it depends on your climate where you are uh I think really the best solution for learning how to best store your tubers specifically is a little bit of trial and era of and doing your own research online because there are tons of sites available to help you learn how to store your tubers over winter so that you can save them and plant them again next year that's really about it for this video I so hope that it was helpful I'm not quite sure if it was uh again you know I'm just speaking from my own experiences so I wanted to share them uh because growing dalos is so fun uh if you're new to the channel and you're not already subscribed be sure to subscribe we'd absolutely love to have you or making new content all the time about cut flowers and all kinds of stuff uh be sure to tell your friend all that good stuff we're just growing our little gardening Community here on YouTube uh if you want to support the channel links to patreon and my soap shop and everything are down in the comments below that's really about it I hope that you guys are having such an incredible day and I'll talk to you all later bye guys