Preparing for Fall and Dahlia Projects

As the end of the season comes to an end it’s time to get ready for winter preparation and digging up the dahlias very soon. This also comes with the task of making sure that everything is labeled before the freeze and also collecting seeds from the plants before that day comes.

Over the last couple weeks I have been collecting seed pods and have been able to harvest and store several already. In the process of doing this I am learning some things that I had questions about previously. 

Like where do the seeds form after they have been pollinated and my curiosity led me to do some dissecting and took some pictures to share with you. The fact that each seed inside the pod could be a different flower depending on what bee visited and which flowers are pollinated is amazing and it’s blowing my mind a little bit. 

Ive seen a ton of pictures online about tubers and also what they look like and how to recognize the eyes etc, what the seeds look like but I’ve never seen the inside of a pod. Now with my seed collecting project, the information is all coming together for me. I am able to see now what an immature seed and a mature seed looks like and to only collect the large viable ones. The seeds pods that are still slightly green, are left to dry until they turn a sort of papery brown color and I’ve been opening them and allowing them to air dry overnight and this has been sort of my nightly ritual of working on at least one or two seed heads per night until they are separated into their own bags labeled with the seed parent. Most of these first ones that I am currently working on are from dahlias that I grew last year from seeds in 2023 garden and in the fall I collected the tubers and replanted them. These will be labeled so I know who the seed parent is. 

I’m getting really excited about trying to create some new varieties of dahlias to expand on my collection. It’s still fairly small but I’m wanting to definitely create a larger one next summer. 

Now that I know that I can store the tubers with success in my climate and indoors, I am going to keep at it and grow them again next spring as well.