Tedious dahlia task is worth a little mud on the face

Rather than signaling the end of the garden season, the dramatic first frost — a full-on freeze, actually — was the harbinger of the messiest job of the garden year. Digging and storing dahlia tubers is an onerous task that could make any gardener think twice about growing them.

The process typically starts by waiting for frost to kill back the foliage, which gives the tubers as much time as possible to mature, aiding in storing and strong growth the next year.

Then there is the careful digging with a garden fork stuck in well away from the stems so as to avoid the chances of spearing the tubers, which is inevitable if you dig enough dahlias. Carefully working the roots out of the soil, a clump of potatolike tubers emerges, sometimes enormous and other times quite unimpressive.

There’s nothing particularly notable about this job up until this point, that is until the hose comes out. Washing soil off dahlia clumps requires a strong stream of water, which will send mud flying in every direction, but mostly directly back in the gardener’s face, creating a muddy branding that fellow gardeners may recognize a day later, as no amount of washing will

eliminate the evidence of a dahlia grower at the end of the season.

With the clumps washed off it’s easy to inspect them for damaged tubers, which should be cut out, or one of two insidious diseases called gall. Crown gall will appear as sort of bubbly growths and leafy gall causes clusters of distorted leafy shoots emerging from the clump. Any clumps with these diseases should be thrown away because they can infect other dahlias.

After washing, dahlias, like gardeners, need to dry, typically for a day, maybe two, but the timing depends a lot on the temperature and humidity. Some gardeners divide the clumps in fall into smaller clumps or single, healthy tubers. I can’t be bothered and push the job off to spring because by this point in the dahlia overwintering process I’m so sick of looking at them I can’t wait to get them packed away for winter.

Storage methods and mediums vary quite a bit, and most gardeners try several before they land on one that works for them. Generally speaking, dahlias, which suffer from a bit of a Goldilocks complex, need to be packed in some material — wood shavings and vermiculite are popular choices — that will maintain a bit of moisture but not too much before being stored in a cool and dark spot between about 35 to 50 degrees.

I never thought that dahlias deserved their reputation as needy plants since other than a bit of staking, they don’t need anything more than any other annual. But it occurs to me that perhaps that reputation is based on their particular winter storage needs. It’s not a task I enjoy, but come next year, when the garden is awash in spectacular dahlias, I’ll tell you what I told the gardener I spotted in the grocery store last weekend with mud on her face: It’s all worth it.