On 16/11/2013 18:42, stuart noble wrote:
On 16/11/2013 18:13, David Hill wrote:
On 16/11/2013 18:00, stuart noble wrote:
On 16/11/2013 09:05, David Hill wrote:
On 16/11/2013 01:08, Christina Websell wrote:
"Roger Tonkin" wrote in message
...
Last nights frost finnished off my dahlias, turning
the leaves brownish black.

Next task is digging them up, drying and cleaning them
for storeage.

How do folks dry/clean them?

I've done different things:

1) Washed them striaght away under a tap/hose to
remove all the mud/stone etc, then left them upside
down in the garage to dry.

2) Just put them in the garage upside down as they
come, leave them to dry, mud and all, then eventually
shake/dig out all the dry mud.

3) Dig/scrape out all the wet mud that I can straight
away, before leaveing and treating like option 2.
Problem with this is that it is easy to damage the
skin on the tubers as it is still tender.


What do other people do, from my point of view the
easier the better!


--
Roger T

My aunt has an Indian gardener, he doesn't bother trying to save
them. He
takes the flakes from the seedheads, spreads them over the top of a
pot of
compost in the unheated greenhouse and leaves them, voila, in the
spring,
lots of baby dahlias! My aunt always has lots of dahlias.
Tina


The brown "Flakes" are known as seeds

Sounds like a good system though?
The only things against it are,
1. You don't know what sort of flowers you will get next year, though if
you only have bedding dahlias then it doesn't matter.
2. They will flower later than dahlias grown from early cuttings or from
tubers.

Good for those who find the annual lifting and storage too much trouble,
or don't have the space
Or you could go the whole hog and get plastic ones and just dust them
occasionally