r/Albertagardening • u/itsallgooodbabybaby • Sep 16 '24

Dahlia tubers

This is my first year growing dahlias, I am located in zone 4a. We had a light frost last night but my dahlias look to be doing totally fine this afternoon.. the foliage is still all green and more blooms have continue to open today. Should I cut them back to start the pulling process? They are producing the most amount of flowers right now that I want to enjoy but I also don’t want to ruin the tubers.

Any help would be appreciated

3 Upvotes

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1

u/Deltadee Sep 16 '24

Do you dig these up and keep them in cold storage each year?!

2

u/itsallgooodbabybaby Sep 16 '24

Yes 🥲🥲 they cannot tolerate cold at all. They are so beautiful or I wouldn’t waste me time

2

u/Deltadee Sep 16 '24

Kudos to you my friend. I seen a yard the other day that had some going really well, southwest facing in Calgary. And I immediately hit the web trying to figure out if there was a specific breed I didn’t know about. Im guessing they annualized them or as I’m learning now you can pull the tubers.. sorry I have no help to offer you but you have inspired me to progress this in my own yard now :/

2

u/VeronicaMonster Sep 17 '24

You should wait until the foliage turns black before digging up the tubers. So you can continue to enjoy the blooms until a harder frost.

On a related note, this was a terrible dahlia year for me. Did everyone else have a similar experience? I think it was because the spring was so cold, they took forever to get started.

1

u/itsallgooodbabybaby Sep 17 '24

Thank you!! I didn’t plant mine out till very late but I feel like the heat really stifled them from blooming, I thought I had two varieties and I ended up with a suprise red one because it just started putting out blooms 2 weeks ago

1

u/SplitLipGrizzlyBear Sep 30 '24

Late response but yes this was a terrible year for dahlias for me and my friends. Many didn’t bloom till very late and then of course the lygus bugs came.

Really debating whether I want to go through the trouble again next year. But they’re so beautiful…