My mother-in-law called them LOLs -- little old ladies. Despite the fact that I have mostly roses in my garden, I decided to join the local chapter of the Dahlia Society. The San Francisco Dahlia Society to be exact. So there I found myself on a Tuesday evening sitting in a room with a crowd of elderly gardeners. Average age 72 -- but they know a heck of a lot about Dahlias.
Ok, to be fair, there are some younger folks ther too, plenty of kids in their 40s and 50s.
Regardless of their age, these big flower lovers convinced me that the only way to treat your dahlias right is to dig them up every year and divide them. To learn how to do this (actually really complicated) task, I spent last Saturday with them digging up all the Dahlias in the Golden Gate Park Dahlia Garden (near the newly rebuilt Conservatory of Flowers). When in bloom this garden is truly stunning.
So here's what you do:
- dig up the dahlias carefully, using the patented two shovel method. Lift them out from below so as not to snap their fragile necks.
- what was, last year, a single potato-like tuber is now a huge clump of tubers all attached to each other.
- gently gently now! rinse all the mud off.
- let them dry.
- very carefully cut them apart. you better have a dang sharp little knife -- I bought a new one for the occasion. When cutting be friggin' careful to get a hunk of the crown with an "eye" - a bud waiting to form -- for each tuber. Mess this up and you have a tuber that never grows.
- rinse off your tubers in a bucket of 10% chlorox solution.
- carefully label each tuber.
- let dry for a few days, then wrap up in plastic bags stuffed wth shredded newspapers.
In about 8 weeks when things start to warm up, all the tubers go back in the ground.
So now my only question is -- what do I do with 20 Bishop of Llandalf, and 20 Angels Dust dahlia tubers? My garden has about room for 4.
Briggs? Interested?
Posted by rich at February 2, 2004 9:48 PM