Digging Tubers & Record Warmth

Today I started the annual project of digging all of my dahlia tubers. The past few years I have made it a goal to dig, divide, wash and store three rows a week. This year however, I planted a record - for me - 17 rows of dahlias. If I only dig three rows a week, I will still be working on this project in December. So, to speed things up and keep me on-track to hit my Thanksgiving weekend "finish" goal, I decided that I need to dig four rows a week this year. I started at the end of the garden that I had planted first. I had already chopped down those dahlia plants last week so they were ready to go. The strange thing today was, that for the first time that I can ever remember, I was actually sweating digging up the dahlias. I was in jeans and a short sleeve shirt and really wished that I had worn shorts. After I finished digging all 55 clumps, I headed back to the house. That's when I found out that it was a record 73 degrees outside. No wonder I was so warm! I can honestly say that I haven't ever dug dahlias in 70 degree weather before. It sure beats the cold and rain.

After I returned back up to the house with all of the freshly dug clumps, I walked over to the front flowerbed. I then dug my one clump of "Weston Spanish Dancer". I originally planted that dahlia when I had one leftover tuber back in May, when I was potting up my tubers for the big garden. I couldn't bear to throw it out, so I quickly popped it into the front flowerbed. It grew, and grew, and grew! I also had four "Weston Spanish Dancer" plants down in the big garden and they grew fine, but nothing like the tuber in the front flowerbed. I was really curious to compare the tuber size between the two different planting locations. Voila! As you can see in the above picture, the dahlia in the front flowerbed produced a tuber clump three times the size of the clumps that were produced down in the big garden. And look at the size of that stalk! It looks like bamboo! I attribute the size difference to the Nature's Best soil mix that fills the front flowerbed. As you can tell, plants love it and thrive on it.