The Big Sleep

This year I left plenty of stem on each tuber--truthfully, I still found it difficult to identify the "eyes" so, I was much more generous with the dividing process. Many of them looked blind, but it pays to adhere to the old hymn, "I once was blind, but now I see". So, everybody got a chance to "see".

I learned about the Ink In a Bottle pencil--the best marking tool for labeling each tuber with it's varietal name--sure beats marks-a-lot pens that blur.

Finally, each tuber was sulfur dusted (wetable).

My Dahlia friends, also, helped me with ideas to store the tubers more efficiently. I purchased (something like) 12"x14"x9"deep plastic file boxes; I needed 4 of them. Using perlite for medium, I layered single varieties of tubers with medium separated by newspaper or paper bags--both bags and newspaper worked equally well. On each box I listed each layered variety of tubers in order.

Then, this year, I stacked and stored the boxes in the front hall closet. When we had the garage remodled into an entry way, we didn't have the closet insulated. On an outside wall, it stays quite cool in there during the winter in Oregon, but won't freeze. Turned out to be a perfect and convenient place to store the tubers for the big sleep.