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Name: DahliaDel Minneapolis Dahlias that touch the heart
As I was cutting up dahlia tuber clumps this year I became fascinated by the role various types of dahlia tubers play in a clump. For example, it is easy to see which is the parent tuber and which are child tubers. But I am concluding that not all child tubers will produce an eye and a spout. For example, I am seeing what I call worker tubers (think worker bees if you will), tubers which just support the parent tuber and provide nutrient storage for the plants. And I have heard that a tuber growing from another tuber, no matter how well formed, will never produce a bloom.
I am wondering if you know of any scientific research on the roles of various types of dahlia tubers in a clump? Specifically, I am wondering if anyone has done any research to this biological level and published an article or white papers on the topic?
Two theories:
(1)all tubers have an eye but some are not visible as they are covered up by stalk material
(2) Some tubers were not blessed by the creator with eyes at all and are "blind".
Most things are caused more than one thing and I say there is some truth to (1) and for sure (2) also.
No science here and only observation. Eyes on mother tubers often are viable. "Blind" tubers thrown onto a compost pile will always have a few sprout and your best stock ever will grow there(Quote from Phil Mingus) I like to divide small tubers into groups of two or three that share an eye. An ugly and even half rotten mother tuber that has a very small new tuber attached to it(yes really small is OK) will grow into a wonderful plant
Tubers that fall off of clumps are 99% not going to sprout because of a broken neck or no eye. However, I cannot resist looking just to be sure and it is a 99% waste of time. I once had a Mingus Toni clump that was self dividing as the stalk material had melted way and all that was left were fat tubers with eyes,Never before or since has this happened.
We like to place a sign on our porch that says: We are in the garden. Really, we are always in the garden.
Del, are you referring to tubers growing off another tuber, kind of like fingers or toes but with no necks attached to the main stem(s)? I have seen those when I dug, and always cut them off the main tuber they grew on because somewhere I had read that those are prone to rot sap the tuber of its life, maybe even kill it, and they will never sprout since they have no eye.
There must be some dahlia nerd biologist somewhere who wrote a paper on types of tubers - the trick would be finding it. I found this picture gallery on the ADS site and picture 14 shows a feeder tuber, which supports your thought that they are to help feed the clump, like 'worker bees'. https://www.dahlia.org/growing/dahlia-university/cutting-dah... Click on the picture to see the full thing.
When growing seedlings , one of your goals is to increase stock of the best ones There are two basic ways: (1)take cuttings . (2) Grow tubers. Micropropagation that yields thousand of plants per batch is not included here.
We do lots of cuttings but also plant lots of seedling tubers, How do you increase the yield of tubers per plant in the garden? Is fertilizer the answer? Is the correct formula for fertilizer the answer? Is it more water? Or planting earlier? Or is there a place with more sun? Do they do better in raised beds? Are there more organically grown tubers per plant? All of these answers help a little bit.
The best cultural procedure to get more tubers from a dahlia plant is not mentioned yet and why not leave all of you with a cliffhanger. Later for the proven answer that almost always works well.
We like to place a sign on our porch that says: We are in the garden. Really, we are always in the garden.
teddahlia wrote:
The best cultural procedure to get more tubers from a dahlia plant is not mentioned yet and why not leave all of you with a cliffhanger. Later for the proven answer that almost always works well.
I hate cliffhangers. Looking forward to the answer!
I do not feel like writing the answer to the cliffhanger today. One day is not long enough for a real good cliffhanger. Does the answer include fish bone meal or bat guano? Both do work to make tubers bigger.
We like to place a sign on our porch that says: We are in the garden. Really, we are always in the garden.
Name: Steve San Diego Commercial cut flower grower
Some years I get way too many clumps of varieties that I need to plant back, so I will just chop the clump in half and plant half clumps instead of single tubers. Each clump produces several shoots. If I mound soil over the first nodes of these shoots early in the year, they will produce tubers at each buried node. The result is a ungodly mass of tubers that takes forever to dig and divide.
Another way to produce more tubers is to bend a stem down and bury several nodes in the soil. If this is done early in the season there will be two beautiful tubers produced at each buried node. They can be tricky to find when digging so, to avoid mixing up varieties, this method works best in a row where only one variety is planted.
For me, the easiest method to produce a lot of tubers is to take a lot of cuttings and grow them as pot tubers.
Well, I guess the easier method is to only plant varieties that produce perfect tubers, equally spaced around the stalk, and can be divided easily with no wrestling involved. Then plant a lot of these varieties,spaced closer than is recommended by the experts.
No more cliffhanger. Steve M knew the answer and wrote a nice description of the procedure:
"Some years I get way too many clumps of varieties that I need to plant back, so I will just chop the clump in half and plant half clumps instead of single tubers. Each clump produces several shoots. If I mound soil over the first nodes of these shoots early in the year, they will produce tubers at each buried node. The result is a ungodly mass of tubers that takes forever to dig and divide."
The key to this is to make sure that the plant has multiple stalks (3 to 5 would be ideal) and since the plant is actually three plants in one, make sure it gets enough fertilizer(maybe 30% more). Yes, the result is smaller tubers and a mass of tubers hard to divide. However, these smallish tubers will grow and make nice tubers the next year. As far as time spent compared to taking cuttings to get more yield, the multiple stalk method takes much less time. I will always do both however, especially since there are only so many split tuber clumps available to plant.
Note: fish bonemeal and bat guano are high in phosphorous but also lots of other good things. If you can use phosphorus in your garden, I would recommend bat guano to make jumbo sized tubers. Not more tubers but huge Volkswagen sized tubers.
We like to place a sign on our porch that says: We are in the garden. Really, we are always in the garden.
Name: Amanda CA Redwood Coast - Zone 9b DahliaAddict.com
Thank you, guys! That's very interesting. I had never heard of the buried stem method before. It's so common for dahlia plants to have a sprawling stem or many for some varieties. I never thought it might be a reproductive strategy, even though I know that tree dahlias are usually propegated from stem segments vs. tubers and that stems are also the source of the Dutch clumps.
Dutch growers grow really long white sprouts from tuber clumps that are kept in the dark and given heat and moisture. The piles of white spaghetti sprout material are cut up and rooted. Thousands of cuttings of the same variety are done and that gives them a batch of thousands of rooted cuttings that are the same age and can be planted together in the field.
We like to place a sign on our porch that says: We are in the garden. Really, we are always in the garden.
Name: Steve San Diego Commercial cut flower grower
teddahlia wrote:Dutch growers grow really long white sprouts from tuber clumps that are kept in the dark and given heat and moisture. The piles of white spaghetti sprout material are cut up and rooted. Thousands of cuttings of the same variety are done and that gives them a batch of thousands of rooted cuttings that are the same age and can be planted together in the field.
That's great to know and something I will try this week (if it quits raining).
Long white cuttings: I do not know if the Dutch growers use two nodes per plant or one node per plant. With two, the one under the soil would make the roots and the one above the soil the leaves. With one node under the soil, the same node would would have to make both root and leaf material. Good luck.
We like to place a sign on our porch that says: We are in the garden. Really, we are always in the garden.
Name: Steve San Diego Commercial cut flower grower
teddahlia wrote:Long white cuttings: I do not know if the Dutch growers use two nodes per plant or one node per plant. With two, the one under the soil would make the roots and the one above the soil the leaves. With one node under the soil, the same node would would have to make both root and leaf material. Good luck.
Yes, thanks, I was wondering about that and was going to ask if you knew. I am guessing it would be two nodes but one node might work similar to a leaf cutting. I also will try one node with the node as the leaves and the bare stem as the roots/tuber. If I have enough "white" stock now I will try all three, otherwise I will try it later.
SteveM wrote:Some years I get way too many clumps of varieties that I need to plant back, so I will just chop the clump in half and plant half clumps instead of single tubers. Each clump produces several shoots. If I mound soil over the first nodes of these shoots early in the year, they will produce tubers at each buried node. The result is a ungodly mass of tubers that takes forever to dig and divide.
I’ve heard people mention this method for increasing tuber production, but I’ve always wondered…. Does this *actually* increase tuber production, or does it only allow you to grow more tubers per square foot of space?
So, for example, if you have a variety that tends to produce six tubers and you cut that six tuber clump in half to create two plants, would you still wind up with approximately 36 tubers (18 per plant)? About the same as if you planted each of the original six tubers separately? Or does this method actually yield a higher tuber count overall? Maybe each plant would yield 25 tubers for a total of 50? If it’s the latter, why is that?
(I know obviously tuber production isn’t that consistent or simple - I’m just trying to make my question clear)
Name: Amanda CA Redwood Coast - Zone 9b DahliaAddict.com
If the plant sends up leafy stalks from the nodes as well, you could conceivably have more tuber mass because there is more photosynthetic area of that variety with relatively minimal additional investment of time, and no additional investment in mother stock. Just a guess on my part.
The magic formula is not how many tubers are in the clumps cut into two pieces but the whole idea that MULTIPLE STALKS in any clump allows the plant to produce more tubers. Plant one tuber and cut off the stalk as it comes out of the soil and it sends up 2 sprouts. Plant three cuttings in the same hole and there are three stalks to make tubers. The easiest way to get the multiple stalk material for many people is undivided clumps. Most of us have them.
We like to place a sign on our porch that says: We are in the garden. Really, we are always in the garden.
Looking forward to the answer!
