I was going to post this on Facebook but this is a better forum for random thoughts: There are two dahlia activities that are mutually exclusive: Collecting seeds and digging the dahlias. Seed harvesting only happens before you dig the dahlia clumps. We do a final check for nice seed pods just before we chop down the foliage. However, we have been gathering seeds for about 6 weeks by then and anything we collect is just a bonus crop. Having said that, there are many, many seed pods that are not harvested here. Some varieties have been proven to have inferior seedlings yet they make a bazillion seeds. I see the huge over packed seed pods of one particular variety and wish that it was a good seed parent as collecting 1,000 seeds from a half dozen plants would be possible. Digging the Giant and Large row of flowers takes extra time as we check nearly every plant for seeds. Once in awhile, a giant will surprise you with seeds but some of the giants do not ever make seeds. Every year, I check Show-N-Tell for seeds pods but after 10 years of checking there never has been any seeds. I have noticed that seed pods collected after a frost are real crap shoot. Many of them have been partially frozen and rot sets in quickly, especially when you bring them into the warm house. The very ripe pods do much better but it is hard to to distinguish a sort of ripe pod from really ripe one while you are concentrating on digging. 
