A Finsh - Potting up the Dahlia Tubers

Today I accomplished one of the gardening tasks that was on my "need-to-finish" list. In a four hours marathon, with a break for lunch, I finished potting up all of my dahlia tubers. Wow- that's a lot of 1-gallon pots! I am still in denial and haven't done a complete count. In a normal year, I like to plant 200 dahlias. With that amount, I can transplant them into the big garden in a two week push, working every day. I can also generally dig-up 200 dahlias over the span of 4 weekends in late October & November. But this year isn't a normal year. This year the Portland Dahlia Society is hosting the National Dahlia Show on Labor Day weekend. It's very rare to be so close to a National Show. So, as I potted up my tubers, I chose to keep 4 of many varieties, instead of 2. The end result is I have 240 potted tubers plus another 12 tubers in the "infirmary" area. Yes, it looks like the garden will have right around 250 dahlias this year. Yikes!