Red dahlias adding a welcome burst of color to the October garden
I remember my Mom growing dahlias when I was small. She planted them in the spring, they began to bloom in July and usually they bloomed until frost. At that point, she dug them out, cut off the foliage and put the tuber clumps into sand in the root cellar. When spring arrived and it was time to plant, she took out the dahlia clumps, separated out a few of the fat tubers and planted them back in the garden. Those dahlias provided dependable fall color with very little fuss.
When I finally had my own garden, I considered growing dahlias for fall color since most of our flowers were finished blooming by September and the garden looked a little bare. I was concerned however about wintering them over. My basement was warm and dry, not at all the right situation to store dahlias. I thought that they would probably freeze if I left them in the garage and they would surely dry out and die in the warm basement. So I never seriously considered growing them.
That all changed this spring when I went to visit my sister Milly who lives in Cornucopia, a small town in northern Wisconsin. In her basement, I saw dahlias flourishing under the grow lights. She said the secret was that in the fall she follows the same process that our mom did—digging out the dahlias and cutting off the tops. But then, instead of removing all of the garden soil from the roots, she simply puts them dirt and all into a bucket and stores them in a dark corner under the stairs in the basement. Periodically during the winter she mists them with a bit of water. Then about in February, the dahlias start to send out a few new shoots of green at which point she pots them up to get ready for spring planting. Those were the dahlia plants I saw in April, when I went to visit.
Since her explanation made it sound so easy, and based on her obvious success, I planted 3 different dahlias this year and will be trying the “Bucket Plan” of winterizing my dahlias. I will let you know how that turns out.