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Making leaf cuttings is an advanced subject and if you have not done traditional cuttings from tubers successfully, I would not recommend trying to do leaf cuttings. Please start at 'The Beginner’s Guide to Dahlia Cuttings' in the Article Section for a step-by-step tutorial on tuber cuttings.
Dahlia Pot Tubers
How and Why
In the USA most people grow dahlias from plant divisions called tubers. Dahlia plants form tubers under the soil and a typical plant has 3 to 7 or more tubers that are about the size of an elongated chicken's egg. The ability to form larger and easily stored tubers is genetically driven and some excellent dahlia varieties do not make tubers that store well. Dahlia enthusiasts have determined that in order to keep over such varieties, that they can take a cutting from the plant and root it and then grow it on in a small pot(2.5 to 6 inches in diameter) containing potting soil. The plant is left in this small pot the entire growing season and the plant will fill the pot with a very small tuber clump. This small clump for unknown reasons will store more easily than tubers. These small clumps are stored either in the pots or removed from the pots to store them over the Winter. In the Spring they are used to sprout more cutting material for plants that are either planted in the garden or are left in the pots to make more pot tubers to continue the cycle. You can also plant the pot tubers in the garden just like you would plant a tuber. By the way, the pot tuber plants are not grown for their blooms although an occasional one will have a smaller bloom. The small potted plants for pot tubers can be grown on the surface of the ground or slightly buried in the ground, crowded very closely or grown above the ground on a bench or table. Pot tubers grown in the ground make bigger tuber clumps and need less watering. However, it takes much more effort to harvest them as the feeder roots will grow into the soil below the pots.
Pot tubers should not be confused with Dutch grown tuber clumps sold in stores and nurseries. They grow dahlias from cuttings and plant them in the ground and crowd them together so closely in the rows that the plants never grow very large but do form small tuber clumps. They mechanically harvest these small clumps and package and sell them all over the world. The Dutch clumps are small but are not constricted by a pot and are not the same as pot tubers.
We like to place a sign on our porch that says: We are in the garden. Really, we are always in the garden.
Ted, the second sort of "pot tubers" you refer to are, according to Kevin Larkin, Dutch pot tubers, hence the understandable confusion in the names. He uses that method as do I for commercial tuber sales.
Using the word "pot" in the name of the Dutch grown clumps is inaccurate as they are not grown in pots and the Dutch grown clumps are in my opinion an inferior product to pot tubers. The use of pot tubers to retain difficult varieties is what most of us think of when we talk about pot tubers but there are other uses such as producing lots of sprouts for the production of rooted cuttings. And many "old timers" keep an inventory of varieties that they do not grow in their garden in most years but want to retain just in case they want to grow them again. It is a heck of lot easier to grow a couple of pot tubers of something for that purpose as compared to growing a full sized plant in the ground.
We like to place a sign on our porch that says: We are in the garden. Really, we are always in the garden.
The Dutch use the word "bulb" a lot for their small tuber clumps and we know that tubers are not bulbs. But as they say: "A rose by any other name...."
We like to place a sign on our porch that says: We are in the garden. Really, we are always in the garden.
Ha my pot tuber of HH Big red survived , I took it out of storage about four days ago and set it on the shelf in the grow room , as I simply cut it off flush with the dirt in its one gal pot and stored the whole pot on its side hanging in a t shirt bag in the storage area , today I couldn't wait so I dumped the pot out and by golly there is a bit of stem with 3-4 fresh shoots starting on it , so I bumped it up to a two gal pot and reburied , I don't want that bit of stem above the soil do I ? I covered it back up . I should be happy with 4-5 cutting ha as I have a tuber coming .
