Dividing Dahlia Tubers

Since I spend most of the day today dividing and potting up dahlia tubers, I figured I would do a post on how to divide up dahlia tubers, so here it is.

How to Divide Dahlia Tubers
I find it best to divide the dahlia tubers in the spring just before planting, at this time the eyes will be more visible than in the fall, making it much easier to divide, especially if you are a beginner.

Dividing the tubers is important, if you keep planting the tubers outside every year without dividing it will become a “root bound” mess. Just picture trying to grow a large plant in a little pot, when you remove it from the pot and look at the roots it becomes way to overcrowded and root bound. Dahlia tubers can do the same kind of thing. If you do not divide them the tubers can become very congested, and run out of room to grow.

When dividing the tubers you have to make sure that for every root you have an eye, if you just cut off the root it will not grow. For beginners it may be easier to just cut the clump in half or three pieces, until it becomes easier to tell where the eyes are and what they look like. Just be sure that every clump has at least one eye. This is what I did when I first started saving dahlia tubers, and slowly every year I was able to cut them up better and better, till finally I could divide the tubers up so almost every root has an eye.

Below: The first photo shows the some visible and still dormant eyes the second photo shows where you could cut in order to have an eye at least one eye for each tuber. The cuts from this photo would give you 4 separate tubers to plant.

Potting up Dahlias

So today I spent most of my day in my hoophouse dividing and potting up some of my dahlias.  I would say I probably got about 1/3 of them potted up.  I probably have 2 or 3 more days of potting up dahlias to go.  Unfortunately I will not be able to pot up anymore until I know that the weather will be a little warmer.  All the dahlias that I potted up today I have in my basement, due to the weather this week it just seems too risky to keep my dahlias out in my hoophouse, since I do not want them to rot or freeze.

The dahlias that I potted up today.

 

The plants that I currently have in my basement.

The dahlias that I potted up today are:  Kelvin Floodlight, Elks Jack Sparrow, Santa Claus, Mr. Optimist, Firebird, Hakayou, Patches, Black Satin, American Beauty, Magically Dun, Sky Angel, and a couple of other ones that I do not know what the names are.

I just can not wait for this

Digging Dahlias

I almost have all my dahlias dug for the winter.  Yesterday I finished up digging most of the rest of my tubers.  Here is a picture of almost half of my dahlias, that I dug out about a week ago.  Overall I was pretty happy with the tubers that I ended up digging.  Considering that we had a bad growing year, too much water then too dry, I ended up digging out some large, nice looking tubers.

 

I can not wait till next year when I can have this again.

 

Mr. Optimist Dahlia

I am so excited to have my first dahlia flower of the year.  It is called Mr. Optimist.  All I have to say is, isn't it beautiful!

I planted many different varieties of dahlias this year and should have a lot of beautiful cut flowers for my markets.  I can not wait to start picking them and bringing them to the market.  I love dahlias, they are so beautiful!