I'm trying to tackle digging and dividing in manageable chunks of time. However each chunk can't be longer than a couple hours so I have many more of these chunks than last year.

So what's on my mind every day is: how do other people get through the long assembly line hours mostly alone? I like these strategies:

  1. Talk to myself, and to the plants, and to the dog; chastise the plants, chastise the dog
  2. Pick at my nails even though this is a lost cause
  3. Find new narrow implements to wedge out small rocks from clumps (I used a pen cap today), very satisfying
  4. Snap stalks with my bare hands instead of clippers whenever I can, very satisfying

I would also like to thank the Schwer brand of protective gloves. I stabbed the tip of a new Zenport snip directly into the pad of my forefinger. Very hard. And I got a very tiny scrape underneath the glove. This is the brand (I am not a paid actor): Schwer SlicePro ANSI A9 Cut Resistant Gloves PR1501, Food Grade Reliable Cutting Gloves, Mandoline Gloves for Kitchen Meat Cutting, Oyster Shucking, Fish Fillet Processing, Wood Working (1 Pair, M) [(https://a.co/d/3xeQuNA)]

    M U S I C ! An inexpensive, used iPod paired with a $30 bluetooth speaker reverberates through up my entire garden! If you fork over $5 per month you can get Pandora with a wide selectionn of tunes. Dig it!

    I listen to audiobooks. I think I went through about 5 this year while digging and dividing. I was on a ghost/horror story kick for Halloween.

    (A few podcasts and a bit of music too, but mostly audiobooks)

      I'm an introvert so looooong days working on something all by myself are perfect. Gives me lots of time to be lost in my thoughts. I have been working 70 or 80 hours a week for the last 5 weeks and I've only listened to music for like 8 hours.
      I do miss having a TV in the garage to watch football on weekends though. 🙂

      I can't pay attention to podcasts very long. My mind wanders and I get in the "zone" where your ears turn off. You know what I mean?

      "Snap stalks with my bare hands instead of clippers whenever I can, very satisfying.'" People get out loppers too soon and many are done just like that. My Zenport scissors are my stalk cutting tool now. No more loppers. I often only partially cut through a really big stalk and then as quoted above: "Snap stalks with my bare hands instead of clippers whenever I can, very satisfying."

      bloomhjelm I listen to music or lectures. I have some Bluetooth headphones connected to my phone. Might have to be music for dividing, but I can pay attention to lectures while weeding or cleaning up.

        5 days later

        There lots of dahlia tasks and some are physically difficult and others boring and repetitive. Two of the my favorites are evaluating the seedlings, especially the first year's crop and the other is gathering seed pods and shucking them. The physical requirements for evaluating seedlings sounds minimal but actually it involves going through a jungle of 6 foot tall seedlings and then crawling onto the ground to locate the plant tag indicating it's parent(s). Sounds easy-peasy but actually it does take some physical effort. Harvesting seed pods is very easy work. However, when the bag of pods reaches about 40 pounds carrying if from plant to plant is very strenuous. Oops, there may have been a typo there and 40 pounds should ahve been 40 ounces and perhaps gathering of seed pods is one of the very least strenuous dahlia activities.
        And why am I listing strenuous dahlia tasks? Because physically digging tuber clumps is near the top of the most strenuous activities for an old geezer like me. Is pounding in T-posts with the heavy post slammer more strenuous?
        Yes and no. There are only about 200 posts to slam and there are way more tuber clumps to dig, making it the most strenuous dahlia activity.

          Teddahlia my most hated job (and it’s also strenuous) is gathering up and disposing of all the foliage. So. Much. Foliage. And it’s all wet and gross and goopy.

            Teddahlia I have a big pile a few hundred feet away in our forest

            I think that might be ok. I don’t have a forest (or a few hundred feet away) so mine have to be bagged and disposed of week after week in the garbage.

              We love our forest but it really is only about 3 acres on a gentle slope and we have walking trail that is about 1,000 feet long to the bottom of the hill. We cheat and keep walking as the area below that is undeveloped too. An ice storm 3 years ago downed about 50 of our trees, mostly cherry trees but a few maples too. The mighty Douglas Fir trees were nearly undamaged by the ice. We have only cleared the walking trail of fallen trees and the remainder are horizontal and we have no plans to do much with them.

                Teddahlia I am sure that nature has lots of plans of what to do with your horizontal trees...like nurse logs, and wildlife protectors, and mushroom nurseries...huckleberry patches, growing nettles....bird nests....It just gets real hard for us humans to get in and try to micromanage them.....

                  When I was at Swan Island Dahlias yesterday, tuber harvest was in full swing. One tractor was mowing the stalks and another tractor was pulling a device to lift the clumps out of the ground. It is an old fashioned potato harvester I think. There were several farm hands following that tractor and lifting the clumps into "home made" crates that are 2 x 8 boards made into a 4 foot square(I did not measure them and they may be a bit smaller) and old fashioned "chicken wire" nailed to the bottom. These are hauled to a storage building and stacked about 15 feet high and not washed. Dividing does not start for awhile and washing is done just before dividing. Meanwhile at the trial garden, instead of a tractor mower, I was using my trusty bonsai scissors to cut the stalks We were allowed to throw the stalks over the fence. Then instead of a tractor drawn potato harvester I used my 4 foot trenching shovel to lift the clumps from the ground. I like to harvest our entries there as the tubers are usually very nice. I placed the clumps into my collapsible vegetable crates. Our crew cleared the entire garden of stalks and clumps and threw all over the fence. The director did dig 6 clumps for entrants.
                  Margaret's Picture of HH Golden Dawn in the kitchen.

                  I'm using a manure fork with round tines instead of my shovel for lifting this year. I have chopped fewer tubers for sure.

                  After lifting a few cuttings I can say for sure that KA's aren't the only varieties not producing tubers. A few others have had issues with Bull's Blood like I have, and of my two Sandia Bliss cutting plants only one grew tubers.

                  Trenching spade(not a shovel) is what I use. It has a long narrow blade that is started a long way from the clump so as to not to hit tubers and since it is angled way below the clump( and it is not a shovel), I can lever the clump up and out of the ground. The blade is much longer than any shovel or fork. For unimportant clumps I do not insert the blade on all 4 sides but for the important clumps I do so. And finally, I do most of my digging on my hands and knees. I like to be close to my work. If the ground is hard, I will do some work standing up but finish on my hands and knees.

                  Teddahlia that’s a big foliage pile. Oof.

                  How many plants do you typically grow (in-ground - not pot tubers)?

                    We plant about 3,000- but since we only keep about 10% of the first year seedlings and about 30% of the second and third year seedlings and we cull all bad stock, we probably only dig about 1500 and that may be a high number.

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