I also have the voles. Last year I planted a whole fence line with the tubers in 8 inch pots and planted them in the ground. They bloomed just like the other dahlias and produced tubers. I don't know how, belive me, but they did.

Actually, I've used this strategy with other plants that I want to be able to pop out easily in the fall and take indoors -- it lessens the transplant shock dramatically. Roots grow right through the pot into the soil. Things like begonias, fuchsias, spikes, asparagus ferns that I want to winter over for the next year.

The only down side I see is that you have to be extra careful about watering, as they dry out faster, especially at first.

I was toying with the idea of doing this with my new dahlias this year -- I spent about $200 on new tubers, since the ones I've previously had did so well and are so nice in the late garden.

I've found them much easier to overwinter in the pots in soil, they don't rot or dry out. All of my old dahlias are in larger, 18" planters, but I don't have room to store any more.

The new ones are probably going in 8" pots or 2 gallon nursery pots, then into the ground. Should work fine.

I have some of the big self watering pots from Gardeners Supply, plus other pots I'm going to plant in, on my deck. Does this mean I can just leave them IN the pots when I move them inside for winter?
If so, it would be so much easier than trying to keep them from shriveling thru the winter.

Are Dahlias as much vole-candy as oriental/trumpet lilies? I lost about 20 orienpet/trumpet/oriental lilies to voles despite using hardware cloth cages. I learned that the regular hardware cloth is too large for the small Eastern voles; I should have used the small mesh kind. Aaargh!

I live on the border of zone 7b/8a, and we got 2 nights of 17 degree temperatures last winter. Would I need to dig up Dahlias or could I leave them in the ground?

Would voles chew through plastic pots to get to the Dahlias?

Susana Mc

We have plenty of voles here and have only had two tuber clumps nibbled over the years out of hundreds grown. Each season I'll find a few holes in the garden descending right next to a dahlia and still find no damage to the tubers, so they're eating something else, thankfully. One year, I was watering in/filling in one of those holes and out sputtered soggy little Mr. Vole himself. I did not towel him off.

Don't know about lily bulbs; those rotted or otherwise disappeared. There are lots of videos and reports of vole trapping methods online and they do mention seeds and tubers as a food source, but voles haven't been a deal-breaker here.

Susana, if you mulched well over the root zone with leaves/straw etc, I think you could easily overwinter clumps in the ground unless you have an inordinate amount of rain. You'd want to divide them every few years to maintain the health of the plants though.