I had followed some rare good advice from the internet about using tomato cages for dahlias.

When I first planted the tubers in May and June,I flipped the standard 42" cages over and snipped off the entire straight wire spike ends. Then I layed the upside down tomato cages on the soil centered above where the dahlias would come up, then took the snipped off wire ends and bent the top 3" into an L shape, and pushed them into the ground as spikes to hold the cages in place.

This made a stronger cage that was less likely to fall over. The top laterals(after pruning) grow through the top ring of the cage, and the lower laterals grow through the lower rings and out below the top ring. They then usually lean up against the rings, giving them support.

So when I went out this morning to prepare for the storm, I simply tied the laterals to the rings to keep them in place, so they dont blow around and break.

My Vassio Meggos has grown to 6'5" at this point! It was supposed to be 4'5", but it has grown taller, and its first flowers are going to open in 3-4 days, so they wont be acting like sails in the wind! I put tall stakes cut from tall pines in our yard beside the Vassio Meggos, attached the stakes to the top of the cage, and tied the top of the main lateral branches close to the stake, so they cant blow too far in either direction.

I also took some 39 gallon trash bags and wrapped them around the base of my dahlias and taped them to the base of the cages to make a barrier to prevent rain water from deluging and flooding my dahlia roots and tubers, after adding more soil to raise the ground level under the drip line.

I also sunk stakes and tied all tomatoes, tall Zinnias, etc.

Hopefully all this will prevent any destruction, but we'll see...........

What did you do?