Skipley Reboot: I believe it was at our trial garden back when and I was not all that impressed. Breeders are sometimes fooled as far as tubers . Wayne Lobaugh said one of his best ones(Newaukum Honey) made lots of tubers the first and second year and then hardly any at all. Some varieties have two or three with no tubers and then one has lots. I have noticed that some only make good tubers if you fertilize the hell out of them. At the Swan Island trial garden my entry (grown from cuttings) made oddball "tubers". The stalk was 4 inches in diameter(and solid) and the eyes were buried in the stalk material and hardly visible and the tubers were not very big. So I had to include a huge amount of stalk with the tubers when I divided them. I will have to go through a "waking up" process to sell some of them so that the eyes will show. I have not yet dug my tubers so who knows what I will get.
HH Sincerely in 2022.
General Dahlia Chat 2024
MissyWeitzel I used to think keeping a Dahlia going via cuttings and pot tubers was ok. Dahlias are so much labor, that adding on pot tubers maintenance is taking Dahlia growing to a "crazy person" level. It sure seems like one must disconnect emotions when growing dahlias.
I am going to grow many of my pot tubers in the dahlia rows next year. They grow into full sized plants and the harvesting is easy as you just pop the pot out of the ground and store it undivided. I may use 5 inch pots for most of them. My pot tubers grown on the wire mesh table do OK but it is a bit shady there now. I water them every day when I water Margaret's hanging pots.
Teddahlia I’ve been very pleased with the pot tuber method you described. I have a few grow bags filled with small pots that are easy to harvest and store.
Question: what about keeping small tubers in a pot with soil over the winter, in the same way? I’ve got a few varieties that don’t store well in vermiculite. I wonder if a small pot of soil would be better. Thank you!
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MissyWeitzel my problem with Skipley Reboot is that the centers blow too quickly after I cut them. It’s frustrating. For me, I get about two tubers per plant, which would be enough for me to keep growing it if I wasn’t otherwise dissatisfied. But I have no goals of selling tubers. Because of that, if a varieties makes enough tubers to replenish itself and I love it, I’m fine with keeping it. Trying to cut back on ones that require lots of cuttings though. (I say, in November. We’ll see if I change my tune in February.)
"what about keeping small tubers in a pot with soil over the winter, in the same way? "
I experimented some years ago with using potting soil as a storage medium for tubers. The tubers were fine but they all grew huge piles of hair roots and that would mean to me that the hair roots would have to be removed before shipping and that is a another step. I also would worry that they would not sprout very well after the loss of the roots.
Having said that about storing tubers, what about your proposal to "pot up" the tubers but not water them and store them in the pots until spring? I bet that this would work rather well but you need lots of potting soil and time and then space to store the pots. Try doing it and let us know. I cannot imagine it not working but all things new have unknown pitfalls. 
Pretty yellow flower, Ted.
Teddahlia That’s exactly what I’m thinking—a makeshift pot tuber for insurance purposes. I had a few tubers from which I didn’t have a chance to make a cutting last year, and then I was sloppy digging them up. Given that so many of my tubers did very well outside underground, I thought I’d try tucking a small tuber or clump into a pot with soil. The small ones seem the most vulnerable to storage failures. They’re only for my own use here. I like to make cuttings and I share them locally. Thanks for the encouragement and I will report back!
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My write up on Dahlia Talk:
Dahlia Talk 11-26-24
by Ted J. Kennedy
There were 32 participants and about 4 people were first timers.
After some social chitchat we received an inquiry from our grower in Australia. He is having problems with earwigs especially the small ones. A couple of people said they use Sluggo Plus(or another brand Black Jack?) that has an insecticide in it that kills the earwigs. Steve in Australia said that is not available there. Another person asked Steve how big were the earwigs and Steve said “4 inches”. There was silence from the Zoom audience as they processed the possibility that they must have very nasty critters in Australia. In my feeble mind, my only thought was that a 4 inch earwig would not fit in my ear. Then Steve said: “Just kidding” and there was some noticeable relief from the audience. The insecticide in the Sluggo is Spinosad that is an organic product and is also sold separately here in the USA. I told the short story of how it was discovered in the Caribbean sugar refineries. He is having a problem with too much rain and he only plants from cuttings. He has extra cuttings and may have to replace several.
Another subject that got a lot of air time was the “”My dahlias grown from cuttings have very few tubers?” I immediately piped in that I recently saw a very logical post on Facebook that made sense to me. It said cuttings should be planted deeper and there needs to be at least one set of inter nodes under the soil in addition to the root ball. When I saw that, it was like turning on a light bulb in my brain. Quickly one of the old timers agreed and said he has been doing that for years(why didn't he tell me years ago?) and it really helps. Steve from Australia grows his cuttings to about a foot tall and buries two inter nodes. And then most of them said almost in unison that this all helps but that many still do not make good tubers. There was some discussion about day lengths when the cuttings are grown under lights but most agreed that many varieties are genetically not good tuber makers. Then we changed the subject to tuber makers.
We agreed that that there is no list being compiled of poor tuber makers. It was like everybody hoped that one of us would volunteer to be the “poor tuber czar “ and keep track of that issue spending 8 hours a day for five days a week. It did not happen.
We were shown a 12 minute video from Swan Island dahlias on how they harvest tuber clumps in the field. I will not talk much about it here except to say it is worth watching. After you see it you will go out and buy two large tractors and hire 10 people to help you with the harvest. In the video, it was obvious they were harvesting after a heavy frost as the plants were all brown. Heather said you should harvest after a frost.
After the video the moderator asked the 32 participants if they harvest only after a frost and if so to raise their hand. No one raised their hand. Dick Parshall stated that he begins digging on October 1st each year and finishes digging and dividing the week end before Thanksgiving. Most of the people in the Zoom meeting were done but several of us were not yet finished including my self and Teresa Bergman.
By the way Sarah Romanek, divided 20 tuber clumps during the two hour meeting and still had time to make a few cogent comments. She wins the prize for multi-tasking.
The conversation went to tuber yields. One after another said it was an excellent tuber year and one of the best ever. I noted that the first year seedlings had huge tuber clumps. Kay Kapps said she averaged 7 to 9 tubers per clump. Dick Parshall surmised that the excellent weather in September caused the extraordinary tuber growth. He stated that some were harvested about September 1st and had only some skinny tubers. The same plants at the end of September had huge clumps.
There was brief conversion about tuber rot and the curse of the purple dahlia( I will not explain, you should participate in the Zoom meetings). The subject changed briefly to the inability of people to capture the true purple of their dahlias in pictures. I volunteered some information that may explain why that is but I will not repeat it here. If you want to know my theory, email me. Having said that, my theory does not offer a solution.
This summary is very brief and the meeting had much, much more content. And it actually went on for an extra 10 minutes and several people started gabbing early before the meeting.
Note scheduling change: The next Zoom meeting Dahlia Talk will be on MONDAY. December 23rd. We may talk about the new 2025 introductions.
Picture is of mother and daughter.
Thank you!There is a common progression of "Dahlia Fever" that includes wanting to grow too many of the "best" ones. Eventually, the person determines that they do not have to grow everything they like and can actually stop growing some knowing it is possible to re-acquire them at a future date. At that point, they have returned to normalcy. For some, it takes many years and an expanding garden before that point is reached. 
I have sorta maybe returned to normalcy but its more about having only 6 raised beds.....
Feeling Relieved!
On the Monday before Thanksgiving we mailed off this years best Salish new varieties to Triple Wren for them to trial and multiply. The weather was mild though it was questionable whether they would arrive before the Holiday. I got word this morning that yes, they did make it the day before and were safely stashed! Since we had the coldest freeze yet of 2024 yesterday down here in Oregon I was really nervous that they were not left out over the holiday, left in a mail truck somewhere! What a relief!
And its a frosty frosty morning here at Salish Dahlias! We have frozen fog on everything and are just now up to 32 degrees...
Now I can switch into my winter chore of making and attaching permanent engraved ID tags to my collection of over 50 different hydrangeas...and of course dreaming of new colors and types to add to it....
calico20hill please show an example of your hand made tags, they would be nice to have.
Bessie Bessie. only the writing on them will be "Hand made". I ordered the tags from somewhere on line. I will try to find the information for you but my bag of them is out in the garage and it is cold out there!
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I dislike accessing the Dahlia Addict Growing Dahlia site and there is nothing new to read or look at. Even old pictures are better than nothing at all.
Baby picture(first year seedling) HH Zahara AA ID orange. 2016
I’m hoping to hear folks inventorying methods and tips while dividing and packing tubers. I always label my shoe boxes with varieties and counts, but then things get squirrely when I’m packing a small clump, or what if one or two tubers are a “maybe” on eying up sufficiently by springtime.
And then how do you notate when one or two tubers are promised for a trade? So many details that are cumbersome between what’s actually written on the box of tubers in the fall vs what’s on the spreadsheet. Keeping everything straight always feels a little wild so I’m hoping someone here has wisdom to help with my chaos. 
Krista I'd love to hear of a simple, or even not so simple (preferably open source), database that could be used for record keeping. I have so many pictures that I'd like to match to seedlings and seedlings I want to match to seed parents. I read of a database a Dahlia grower used, but when I was ready to get to work, I couldn't find the details again online.