Church Mum Sale

[aftermidnight]

Steve, how do you store your tubers, when I grew dahlias I had storage problems until I started burying them below the frost level, putting a cover over the top so the only moisture they got was from the sides. Actually in the spring when I dug them up the tubers were in better shape then when first buried.

Annette

 

[digitS']

@aftermidnight , my storage conditions can't be the best but, at least, I don't have problems repopulating the dahlia garden each spring. There is a danger that I will lose a variety but I have deliberately not tried to take my dahlia growing to an aficionado level. I am not really a collector of anything .

This old house has one basement room with a "dirt" floor. Since our dirt is about 50% gravel at any depth, it's really quite okay and likely helps to add a little needed humidity. There is about a 0% chance of drainage problems ... the winter temperature range in the room is about from 50°f to 35° (2°c to 10°c). It has never dropped below that even at -25° (-32°c) and isn't much warmer than 10°c through the summer.

Did I get all those conversions mixed up? When, oh when, will the US join the rest of the world with metric instead of using this dang British colonial mess?

... I have steep basement stairs and carry the tubers down in plastic bags, like from the supermarket. The roots have been washed off, so we can see what we are doing. Good looking ones are cut out and placed in peat moss, about 3 to a bag. I'm careful not to close up the bag once it goes onto that basement floor. And, there they sit for 6 months ...

Different crops have different storage requirements. Onions sit on shelves without any peat moss. The conditions down there must be pretty good for onions because they always last longer than the catalogs suggest. The opposite is true with potatoes. Gladiolas in wood shavings do fine.

Steve

 

[Nyboy]

Wow they did not look like wood. I like very neat very straight.

 

[digitS']

 

[journey11]

Steve, how do you store your tubers, when I grew dahlias I had storage problems until I started burying them below the frost level, putting a cover over the top so the only moisture they got was from the sides. Actually in the spring when I dug them up the tubers were in better shape then when first buried.

Annette

I like this idea! I had given up on getting dahlia tubers through the winter because my house is too dry from the wood stove. The basement is heated also. The garage gets too cold and freezes.

 

[Smart Red]

I had lunch with some retired teachers today. One wanted to pick up a few hardy mums for her yard and I offered to drive her to the other side of town.

I joined her in purchasing several nice mum plants myself. Smaller and cheaper since I don't mind waiting for things to grow, but still bigger than the cheapest Home Depot had to offer.

This is the first year I've planted many flowers in several years. I'd never started so many annuals as I did this year. Wow! I sure got the butterflies I'd been wanting. I guess annuals are generally better than perennials at drawing them 'cuz they were all over this year.

Now I have the mums to plant. So many of my perennial flowers bit the dust in the drought of 2012 and I've not spent the time to replace them. I am pleased with the color in the yard even if the veggie garden is an embarrassment this year.

Wait for next year!