JessieC Hm, yes, I had lots of dry soil too. When I turned the bags upside down, I found that if I held onto one *corner of the bottom seam with one hand, I could sort of punch 3 or 4 indents around the perimeter, at an angle, into and following the seam line of the bag. This separated the hair roots from the fabric pretty effectively, and broke up the soil ball allowing the contents to just fall into the mixing tub as I lifted the bag. Hopefully this makes sense and is helpful! It sounds like a pretty aggressive method, now that I’m typing it out. Hopefully my new neighbors weren’t watching. 
General Dahlia Chat 2024
I have a tile scrubbing brush to help with sticky dirt. It is extremely stiff and also knocks off any loose bits of crown that would rot off in storage anyway. I'm looking for a couple more brushes of different sizes to help me clear out the crotch of the clumps. 
Does anyone know anything about Woodlands Seraphina? It may be bred by Bill Mishler. Looking for info about him or when it was introduced. Thanks 
- Edited
Bill Mishler was the director of the Portland Dahlia Society for many years. He died of cancer 10 years ago.
Woodlands Seraphina was introduced in 2004. Bill was a retired bricklayer, married to the late Betty, raised Husky dogs, had a hobby apple orchard on his acreage in Woodland Washington and the best time to visit him was in the Fall when the apples were ripe. He was a bow hunter and was accompanied by Phil Mingus for that endeavor. He never kept track of the parents of the seed pods he used for breeding.
I can go on and on about Bill Mishler. He was exceedingly cheap and drove a Volkswagon diesel pickup the 50 or so miles to the trial garden. It had no air conditioning and could barely go 60 miles per hour but he claimed it got 45 miles per gallon. When his wife Betty got sick she insisted that they get new car and he upscaled to new Honda Fit. As a breeder he loved to bring seedlings to meetings. Invariably, by the time the flower got to the meeting it was either totally wilted or even worse hugely open centered. He was known for his famous quote "You should have seen it when it was nice."
I grew Woodland's Sarafina, Woodland's Naomi, Woodland's Sweet, Woodland's Wondrous. Sarafina and Wondrous were two of my favorites.
Woodland and Bill Mishler: One of Bill's best flower was called Woodland's Dufus. To say the least, it's name kept most people from buying it. Woodland's Wild Thing was Bill's favorite of his seedlings. It won a best in show at a very small show in the Mid west and he was elated. At a memorial set up at the trial garden there was a picture of Wild Thing. Bill did curse occasionally and did so in reference to his lack of ability to get any seeds from Wild Thing. His good friend Phil Mingus got some seeds and introduced Dr. John E. Kaiser, a smaller version of Wild Thing that is easier to grow well. Bill was miffed but Phil was his best dahlia friend.
At what point does someone using your flowers for breeding become less of a compliment and more of a cheat?
Mr. Kennedy, did Taratahi Lilac grow for you this year?
Teddahlia One of Bill's best flower was called Woodland's Dufus. To say the least, it's name kept most people from buying it
I totally would have bought Woodland’s Dufus just for the name.
Here’s my dufus. With his favorite “ball”. (Sorry - I know pet photos belong in “Off Topic” but…)
Taratahi Lilac is an over bloomer and had like a hundred(exaggeration) flowers at a time on the plants. I was disappointed that almost none made seeds. Later in the late season there were a few more seeds. We will see if it has nice seedlings but my experience with other "overbloomers" over the years has been disappointing. Lakeview Glow is one that overblooms for example. It's seedlings were too and I am not into that trait.
Using other peoples flowers for breeding is a compliment to that breeder. Several famous breeders used only stock from their favorite breeder to get started. Unfortunately, it was done mostly posthumously. Note I said "used only" as using flowers from different genetic lines and crossing them is not something a beginner should do.
I asked Dr. Keith Hammett PhD whether dahlias had hybrid vigor. He said that I was the first person to ask that question of him. He said "I will answer the question after I think about it. "
An hour later, I waited for his erudite answer. He looked me in the eye and said : "No".
I said this and that in response and again he said said "no" .
There is a genetic definition of hybrid vigor that is something that is very technical. From his perspective, dahlias do not meet that definition.
When breeding dahlias, you are incorporating the genes you want into the flower. When you outcross. the same trait in the other line may be caused by different genes or even a different set of genes. They may or may not be compatible with your flower. Staying within a line of breeding you have much better chance of compatibility. If you define "hybrid vigor" as "you will get a lot of unexpected bad and sometimes good results." then yes they have hybrid vigor. Our best results come from crosses within our own lines of breeding.
Ted, your brain banks a lot of knowledge!!! 
Teddahlia that's impressive information, coming from Dr. Hammet. His advice plays right into his thoughts on making sure one has specific goals one is trying to reach in hybridization. But, to be contrary, I think hybrid vigor can be utilized in Dahlia hybridization. For example, if you're just starting out hybridizing dahlias, do you cross two Clearview ball dahlias together, two 20th Ave. Ball dahlias together, or cross a Clearview Ball with a 20th Ave. Ball? All those crosses might produce some acceptable seedlings, however, the theory on hybrid vigor tells us a cross of Clearview ball X 20th Ave. Ball might be worth a try, and could produce a superior plant to either of the "line" crosses.... This concluded my brain gymnastics for today.
bloomhjelm Oh wow!!! I love Wondrous!! Thanks for sharing!
Hybrid vigor in the classical definition involves crossing two extremely INBRED specialized parents together and the result is a plant with more vigor than just a regular well bred plant. How do you create an inbred dahlia to qualify for being inbred? Dahlias are octoploid and have 8 genes for a trait. In order to be inbred all or most of those genes need to be the same. If you are line breeding, I suppose if you inbred for about 3 or 4 generations(mother daughter crosses or father daughter or brother sister or what ever) you might get a dahlia to have some of the same alleles but I know of no line that has that many backcrosses. And the other one would have to be inbred too. So, I doubt much vigor would result from the "barely inbred" lines and as I said you are risking incompatibility. I think the reason many casual breeders fail is because they believe that two nice flowers should create nice flowers when in reality the two flowers are nice for different genetic reasons and when the two are crossed most if not all of the seedlings will be far worse than both parents.
Teddahlia Let me see if my brain is working this morning, and following along correctly. Ted, are you saying using breeding lines to hybridize helps to some what zero-in, and corral or increase genes for a specific trait that you are looking for, which then can be used to get a better percentage of dahlias with that desireable trait? Whereas, crossing two completely unrelated dahlias with nice, similar traits will likely produce a hodgepodge of seedlings that may not have any of the actual nice trait you are looking for because so many genes are unknown and potentially random? Please correct any part of the above statement : )
I could not use much of your language and wrote the following addressing these issues:
Using same breeding lines to hybridize helps to preserve traits you want. Using those resulting seedlings for further breeding allows you to further develop and concentrate good traits and there is enough diversity in the seedlings to get slight changes in form and many different colors. If you want to out cross to acquire a particular trait, be prepared to lose many of your good traits from your line and you will have to cross back the resulting seedlings with your line to re-aquire the the traits you lost.
And crossing two completely unrelated dahlias with nice, similar traits will likely produce a much lesser percentage of nice flowers because the two crossed lines have a high percentage of incompatible genes.
We talk about "genes" and I have been corrected by a more educated person that usually I am talking about alleles. Alleles (I would rather use the more loosely defined word genes) in dahlias are very difficult to identify and concentrate because dahlias are octoploid.