Remember the colorful dahlias that I mentioned a few weeks ago? Well, these ugly fellas are the tubers that make the gorgeous dahlias. It's a bit of a chore to dig them all up, wash the dirt off, let them dry, and store them away in a box (newspapers will do, but a mix of vermiculite and perlite is better). My mom just puts them into old pantyhose and hangs them in her basement over the winter, but my basement is too cold for that trick. Most years I also I label them by color with twist ties, but I never got to that this year because a mid-week hard frost caught me off guard, and the leaves and flowers turned black before I got to them on the following weekend. But my dahlia patch is a mixed jumble of colors anyhow, so it doesn't matter what colors go where. The main thing is to keep the tubers free of moisture so they don't get any sort of fungus over the winter. They shrivel and shrink in size, but once I stick them into the ground in the spring the magic begins all over again!
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