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Has anybody up north tried leaving in ground.

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Posted by billjoebob 7a (My Page) on
Tue, Dec 2, 14 at 17:35

Over Thanksgiving, my neighbor's sister came down from Wisconsin; she says she lives smack dab in the middle of the state. She swore to me that she cuts her foliage and lays on top of dahlias and covers them with a 10 mil thick tarp. Every year her dahlias come back and she only loses 5 to 10% if that. Has anybody that far north
done this and had success. I know they do this in the northwest but
I've never heard of success that far north.

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RE: Has anybody up north tried leaving in ground.

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On the eastern portion of Washington state, you only leave them in the ground if you never want to see them again :)

Regardless of your location, if you get a hard freeze of your ground the tubers will die.

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RE: Has anybody up north tried leaving in ground.

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Plant folk apparently refer to that as a cloche... The idea is to mulch, tarp and pray.

The mulch provides depth so the soil may avoid freezing solid underneath, the tarp keeps water from rotting the tubers, and then you pray that your new $25 intros from Swan Island has durable enough tubers to last the winter.

Some varieties have amazing storage abilities, some rot if you look at them wrong. Most are somewhere in-between. If you just grew the same varieties, the heartier of them might make it, while the others are rotted and forgotten.

One grower in 5/6 PA has overwintered Romance for several years in a semi-protected area with nothing added... He didn't plan on keeping it, but it kept coming back! But most folk that overwinter in the ground do that with varieties that they don't mind losing. They dig those intros.

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RE: Has anybody up north tried leaving in ground.

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I have accidentally left Dahlia tubers in the ground in an area with good drainage, and none of them came back even though the beds are mulched and we always have a good mulch of snow that prevents deep freezes.

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RE: Has anybody up north tried leaving in ground.

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Soggy soil with dormant tubers are the kiss of death, from Florida to Ontario and everywhere between. That snow has to melt sometime!

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RE: Has anybody up north tried leaving in ground.

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gotta dig em, here in iowa. plant them in a pot and bury the pot to the lip. makes fall digging a breeze. pot comes right up and you don't have to cut the tuber

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RE: Has anybody up north tried leaving in ground.

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Commercial growers encourage this practice as it means more sales as the people usually lose them. There are so many ways besides freezing too: rodents especially gophers, rot, insects, slugs, snails and probably more.

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RE: Has anybody up north tried leaving in ground.

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I discovered a couple of dahlia tubers, fairly dried up, that I neglected to plant last spring. Is there any way of wintering them - in ground outside or pot in basement - for best chance of survival in zone 7?

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RE: Has anybody up north tried leaving in ground.

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Since they seem to have made it an extra year wherever they were, leave them there and plant in a pot in March. I have found that about 25% of tubers stored for that second year will grow. But not a very good practice.

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