Video Transcript

Hi. I'm Hans Langeveld, with longfield-gardens.com, and I'm here to show you today how to dig dahlia bulbs to store them over the winter. Now before showing you how to dig these dahlia bulbs, I'm going to tell you a little bit about it because these as you can see have been frozen and it's just the foliage that froze and the bulb underneath is still alive and healthy. It we keep it in the ground there longer and we get more frost, then eventually the dahlia will freeze over the winter and then we have nothing. I like to use the pitchfork to loosen up the soil and then we can use the smaller shovel to actually dig it out. Take it out. There it is. And as you can see the dahlia is in very good health. It's actually grown over the summer. We can plant it again next spring and have beautiful dahlias again next year. So now I've gotten the dahlia out of the ground and we're going to now cut the foliage off. First we're going to get a little bit of more soil off the roots, like that and then we're going to cut the foliage off. And we'll do that just about an inch about where the roots start. All right. We're going to cut it off. Now as you can see the foliage of this dahlia is all dried up and frozen while the actual clump with the tubers is still perfectly healthy. These stems are eventually going to dry back. OK. And the eyes of next year's sprouts are going to come right from the crown of the bulb and start right there. This is how you want to store it over the winter. Let's dig up another one here as we did with the first one. See with the fork you loosen the soil up, take the plant and dig it out. Dig the dirt out of it. And this dahlia's actually grown quite a bit over the summer. It looks like it's a nice healthy dahlia that will produce beautiful flowers again next year. When the dirt is off, now we're going to cut it and we'll cut it about an inch above the bulb, just like that. Now I've shown you how to dig dahlia bulbs so we can store them over the winter. My name is Hans Langeveld from longfield-gardens.com and come visit our website for more wonderful tips and videos. We'd like to help you grow strong gardens.