Dahlia Bishops Children

I've bought tubers and was thinking I might split them carefully into two. Bits tend to drop off easily and unless they have a section of neck attached will never grow.

One tuber out of each bunch will probably only produce one or two growing stems. Is that different from making a cutting from each shoot, which would also only yield one or two growing stems per tuber. Or would it?

Is a freshly rooted single cutting more vigorous and productive than a single tuber section?

En masse, would you get more of a display from
a. a fat bunch of tubers subdivided into single tubers with neck attached or
b. the same fat tuber encouraged to produce shoots which are then harvested for cuttings?

 

Cut about five or six leaves down from the top of the stem, leave just two sets of leaves at the top and plonk in water! That easy.

 

Well the seedlings are up after seven days, chuffed.

 

They ain't like spuds - stick a tuber in and it grows. It is critical that you keep a piece of stem with them that has a bud on it (or will develop one). I think its hit & miss so I pamper the tubers with some damp compost and heat in February to get them into growth and then take cuttings off the shoots.

Conventional wisdom is to take cuttings with a bit of "heel" / tuber attached. Its not like they are hard to root, and I've never understood why this is preferred - the Tuber has to then trigger a new bud to grow (I imagine). I take cuttings just above the lowest leaf pair - I have to wait a bit longer to have a cutting long enough (well, I have to wait for one more leaf pair to grow, I suppose ), but the leaf pair I leave behind then bud-breaks and if that happens early enough I get another pair of cuttings from that before allowing the plant to crack on with growing for the season.

I doubt it, but my preference is quantity, to bulk up "stock", with a longer term view of having loads of good tuber clumps for next year, and reasonable flowers this year. In practice I have found that towards the end of the season there isn't much to tell between them, so I reckon all that a big clump of tubers is getting you is slightly earlier flowering, and Dahlias aren't particularly good at that anyway - if you are starting them off, with some heat, early in the year then you will be giving them the best / earliest start you can anyway.

 

Coming along well...I think. How much longer do I need to wait until I need to pot on?

 

Mine were sown on the 15th Feb so roughly thirty days old. When did you sow yours FC?

 

Mine are nearly at that stage nfrost , I pricked them out into Wilkos 75mm square pots last week. They will grow on in these until I plant them out .

 

Thanks for that Harry, I'll get on to potting them on then I guess.

 

Well I've finally got round to potting them on, gave most of them away now.

 

Here they are now, roots have just started to poke out the bottom of the pots:



...but is there something wrong with them?

 

Not sure what the marks are on the leaves nFrost , but they look very healthy in the pots . Mine are out of the GH now to harden off ,but seem a lot more floppy than yours. They will all perk up when planted out in a week or two

 

Planted my Dahlia Bishops Children out a week ago . One was looking a bit drab today , on inspection , yes , Monsieur Sloog had got it ! Removed the stem and it was sprouting again ! from a little corm about 1" long - so that is now planted up in a pot in the GH . Quite amazed they have formed corms when I only sowed seed in mid Feb .