In another garden I am being very brave. 

I am being especially brave in garden #2 because it is my garden.

My own Dahlia tubers will stay in the ground all winter. 

625kg of horticultural grit arrives on Tuesday. I will mulch the cut flower bed with the grit – this will keep the tubers warmer and aid drainage in the soil. Dahlia tubers will put up with a bit of cold, but cold and wet will result in the tubers rotting and my beautiful Dahlias will not come back next year. 

 

I am hoping that the grit will help in another important way. When the dahlia shoots emerge next year, slugs and snails will be less willing and able to travel over the grit to munch the tasty, fresh growth. 

This will be a risky move. We could, quite conceivably, experience a horribly wet and cold winter. We have already had a couple of heavy frosts. I could lose them all. 

It goes without saying that I really, really hope that I don’t! 

 

Less risky is the method that I employ in my client’s wonderful garden – garden #1. 

Over the 7 years that I have worked in the garden we have built up quite a considerable collection of Dahlias. 

 

We have the space to store the Dahlia tubers inside, away from the worst of the winter weather and it almost guarantees that we can put those Dahlias back in the ground next summer. 

We dig up the Dahlias after the first frosts. 

 

We make sure that the Dahlias are correctly labelled – either with their botanical name or, if the name has been lost along the way (as can sometimes happen, despite all best laid plans) or the Dahlia has been grown from a seed mix, we label with a flower colour, flower form and an approximate height description. 

The foliage is cut down to about 20cm and then the tuber is stored upside down for a few days thus ensuring that the moisture in the remainder of the stems exits before storage. 

 

Next week we will collect up all available storage crates, crack open our vermiculite supplies and tuck the Dahlias away (checking on them and giving them a small sprinkle of water every three weeks to ensure that the tubers do not completely dry out) until mid-spring 2017 when we will say hello to them again, pot them up and watch as they send up new shoots and we can revel in the anticipation of greeting the sumptuous flowers in high summer. 

 

The Dahlia tubers in my own cut flower patch will have to fend for themselves. I will be watching with great interest and with a huge amount of trepidation. Will my tuberous babies reappear or not? 

Here begins the Great Dahlia Experiment of 2016-17.