"Spider" wrote in message
...
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?




Only if you want lots of dahlias; not if you want vegetative replicas of
the parent plant. For identical plants, the tuber or cuttings therefrom
are essential.

I doubt that is important for my aunt. She's 88, and likes any dahlias she
gets.