Ha! It's the only time it's happened here.

The bad news of the day was when I checked my dahlias. Most did fine but I had about 60 and there were about a dozen in the big bag. The others can't be in the shed since I just cleaned it out and there aren't any bags in there. I've been cleaning out the garage and haven't seen any bags of dahlias there. A real puzzlement. I'll have to check the attic again.

Hope you find them Arlene. I am slowly posting my dahlias to my list and noting which are up for sale or trade. Of course, until they 'officially' come out in March no guarantees

Mother Nature has sent me a gentle reminder to start checking the stored tubers more often. This cold, dry air is wreaking havoc with my skin and I'm reaching for the Gold Bond or Jergen's lotion every day. I'm sure the tuber skins don't like this low humidity any more than my own skin does. This time of year seems to coincide with the start of the tubers shriveling. The shriveling seems to escalate during February. I can begin to relax a little with the slightly warmer, more humid air in March. I've had about a 50% loss the past two years. I'll start keeping a closer eye on them and keep the squirt bottle nearby.

This past fall was the first time I've stored the tubers in sealed Zip-locs with some holes punched in the bags. Always before, I left the bags open fearing rot if any excess moisture couldn't escape. Now I'm thinking too much moisture escaped and the tubers dried out too much. Every area in the country has different humidity levels and hopefully this "experiment" will give me a better idea of how to store in my area.

Dan - I have quite dry winters here too. I have had good luck individually wrapping each tuber in saran wrap. Last year I'd guess 85- 90% success rate.

If you have some that are beginning to shrivel you might want to try it.

I've tried the saran wrap a few times in the past with so-so results. I imagine it takes a bit of experience to judge the necessary drying time before wrapping to avoid rot. I had a few tubers the year before that I really didn't care for so I used them as "guinea pigs" to experiment with the saran method. The results were actually pretty good with around 75%, in the spring, looking exactly the the way they did before wrapping the previous fall.

This past fall I didn't want to put all my eggs into one basket so I divided many of my favorite varieties into thirds. I stored one group in Zip-Locs with cedar chips and copper dust. Another group went into the Zip-Locs with vermiculite and sulphur. The last ones were saran wrapped, along with a few others I wasn't crazy about. I also stored 12-15 clumps in plastic grocery bags, unwashed with the dirt, rocks, worms (?), etc. I had pretty good success with this method last year after hearing about it from Arlene. Hopefully, at least one method will work.

I also tried the grocery bag idea (got from Arlene) this year. It is certainly no worse that several other methods I have tried and was much less work and less expensive. I think I should have brought a spray bottle downstairs when I did my bag check a day or so ago. But I just don't have the umph to go down there again. I am not unhappy with the results thus far. I think the ones I did lose were probably going to be goners no matter what I did. And I am really impressed with the clumps. I did wash knock a lot of dirt off of them before bagging. Maybe I should have just left the dirt on.

The clump in the photo is Ferncliff Illusion. I had three or four of these last year. Every clump was the same with many long skinny tubers. I'm not sure if there is a reliable way to store the skinny necked tubers without them drying out. I wrapped some in saran and stored one whole unwashed clump last fall. I assume this is a difficult variety to store since I looked at dozens of bagged FI in several stores last spring and 90% or more were completely dried out.

Oh Yeah - those pencil thin tubers are really difficult to keep over the winter.

I have certainly heard good things about storing them in whole un-washed clumps, it just takes so much more space, that I haven't considered it for myself.

Its smart of you to be trying different methods, ultimately we all have to figure out what works best in our own home situations.

By the time we each have a method perfect for each of us, we'll all be turning into compost.

Found two more bags of tubers (each in its own bag) in the attic and all were ideal: no losses there.

Arlene, what did you do. Leave bags all over the pace?

Compost indeed. But I have to agree.

Hardly! I had two big bags, which each had many individual bags of tubers, then another with tubers for my neighbor, then one more with the last few I had dug. They all went to the unfinished attic but some made it halfway down the steps while others didn't get that far. I'm happy that only a few didn't survive.

I have used the plastic grocery bag method for about 5 years now. I store as clumps. I don't let any know they are my favorites, since then they would be the ones that failed to overwinter. Lol actually have a pretty high success rate with this method.

I've done it for many years with good results.

Some may have seen this out of focus photo before as I had posted it on DG last fall. It was among several other tubers that absolutely refused to sprout last spring. I finally gave up and put them into a Zip-Loc bag to throw into the trash. Somehow the bag was knocked off a shelf and had fallen behind some boxes. After digging and storing the tubers in late November, I was moving things around in the shed and found the bag of tubers. They had been hidden in the shed since May or June in a sealed bag with no air holes, no water and virtually no light until Nov. 22nd. The rest were rotted but this one had four green sprouts. I cut off the sprouts and stored it with the others. It was a little dried out and probably won't grow but I felt it deserved a second chance. Dahlia tubers sometimes seem to have an unbelievable will to live.

The photo defines determination. Any idea of the ID? It deserves a spot in the garden even without ID.

I can't remember whether the name on the tuber was legible or not. Or maybe I've just forgotten the name. I'll check when I'm in the attic tomorrow. I'm curious myself.

Some won't keep no matter what you do, some have a will to grow that is incredible.

My first experience with dahlias was years ago, in my 20's. I had my first home that had a space to garden. My mother gave me a few dahlias tubers, which were something I knew nothing about and wasn't very interested in. They went into a cardboard box, under a work bench in my studio, and I completely forgot about them, until one day months later a flash of red caught my eye. Not only had it sprouted, it had sent up a stalk, with a bud that was halfway open.

That was one wild first experience with dahlias!

Hi guys, last winter I stored some of my dahlias just in bags with new sandy soil in a dark and dry place each of the clumps unwashed placed in a new plastic polythene black bag..those very cheap plyable plastic bags with some holes for drainage at the bottom ( very similar to the grocery bag method). They were kept up in the main storage room dark and piled up two layers. Then in early spring I moved them to my greenhouse. A few weeks later they had all sprouted 95% success rate. As the bag already had some compost added to the very sandy soil, the tubers started regrowth with some nutrients as well. In late spring ( that is November here) they left the greenhouse with their first flower buds showing so they went into their holes in their beds by dec 1. Thus I had a very early start with many cultivars already in bloom by mid- December. Somehow new sandy soil keeps the average humidity level for the tubers to avoid shrivelling and if kept dry also avoids rotting fungi. Reading the various opinions along the thread, for those that have too dry winters then perhaps they may need perhaps a light watering by mid winter once. My environment never has winters with very high atmospheric humidity so that excess humidity inside the soil doesn't seem a handicap. I've lost uplifted tubers to molding by keeping them in sealed plastic bags and to shrivelling by keeping them in just too aereated bags ( i.e too many holes). What I try to emulate is what those tubers would have done in their native Mexican original environment, where winters are cold ( below 30ºF) but never freezing the ground and very dry. Somehow lifting them completely out of soil doesn't seem within their preferences. The only drawback of my method is that it requires much more space. The dividing part can be done as soon as the bags show initial buds popping up. Those first shoots are so vigorously vital that I've discovered by trial and error that if they happen to snip one off instead of discarding them they can be planted aside as a cutting and they may probably reach flowering size even in their first season in spite of their own tuber being no longer attached. Arturo

The method you are describing sounds very much like the method most of the British use. They rarely plant tubers. Every thing is grown from cuttings off of last years tuber clumps.

They pull out the stored clumps in January (not sure how that would translate to your southern hemisphere growing cycle) and begin taking cuttings so that they have sizable plants to put in the ground in May.

One gentleman I was reading about explained that it allowed them to keep only their best stock. He grew 12-20 plants of each of the cultivars he was interested in, and only dug the tubers clumps of the 3-4 best and healthiest plants for the next year's grow, those would produce 10-20 sprouts a piece which he would grow as cuttings, planting out the best.

I have certainly noticed that some of my plants have gotten less vigorous over the years, as I only plant 2-3 tubers at the most of each type, and have no way of knowing if they are "the best". With cuttings you know you are getting genetic clones, with tubers, on occasion you get a plant that has lost a gene or two or mutated in some way.

If I had the space for storage and the room in my garden to grow larger numbers I would definitely be following this pattern, but for now it just isn't practical for me.