Abby winning Best Junior Bloom with Skipley Spot of Gold at the Dahlia Society of California's August 2024 flower show.

Abby winning Best Junior Bloom with Abby at the Dahlia Society of California's August 2023 flower show.

Abby winning Best Junior Bloom with Jowey Nicky at the Dahlia Society of California's August 2022 flower show.

Supplies: Tubers, soil, labels, and a container.

Put your tubers in a container of potting soil.

Now cover your tubers with dirt, leaving the top of it uncovered.

Now give your tubers a little bit of  water.

Place your tubers under grow lights and if you want, on top of a heat mat.

The materials we used for doing pulls were Clonex, Root Riot, grow lights, a heat mat, and an 12-celled tray for the soil cubes.

Start with a healthy sprout from your tuber.

Carefully pinch near the base of the sprout and the tuber, wiggle it off of it, and remove the leaves near the bottom.

Next, gently dip the broken end into the Clonex, which helps the plants to create roots.

Put the end with the Clonex on it into a piece of Root Riot or soil. We found that Root Riot works better, but both can work.

Finally, repeat the steps for the rest of the sprouts and put the tray on the heat mat and under the grow lights. You have now successfully learned how to take pulls!

Around two weeks after pulling your sprouts from the tuber, check for a pull that has a developed root system.

Once you have filled the four inch pots with soil, and created a hole in it, dip the root riot cube into Mykos and carefully place it into the soil hole.

Give it some water, put in the label, and you're done!

Cafe Au Lait (cream) being pollinated by a bee

Coralie being pollinated

Take the dried up flowers and search for the seeds. If the seeds are hard and look darker, then they are more likely to have been pollinated.

Label the seed packets and place the good seeds into it, making sure to separate the different flower varieties.

Now you're done collecting your seeds. Keep them in storage until you're ready to sprout them, or about two months before they will be ready to be planted outside.

If you want to learn more about seeds and growing dahlias, you should buy Kristine Albrecht's book, which is an excellent resource.

Take your seeds out of storage, and place them on one side of a wet paper towel. Fold the towel in half so that the seeds are covered and place it into a Ziploc bag along with its label.

Check on the seeds occasionally throughout the week, and when you find that some of them have roots appearing, take them out of the paper towel. Place the root of the seed faced down into a Root Riot cube so that not much of the seed is visible.

Once you see a prominent root system on the plants, you are ready to repot.

The left shows seedlings that grew in regular soil, and were less successful, while the right was grown in Root Riot and made much more progress.

Dip the root riot cube into Mykos and place it into a four inch pot filled with soil.

Put them under grow lights, and you are finshed. Leave them to grow until they are about 8 inches and are lush and tall.

Begin by choosing some of the larger dahlia seedlings that are currently in four inch pots.

Now, dig a hole with your trowel big enough for your four inch pots to fit in, and place it (both the pot and the plant) into the hole and fill the rest back in. Repeat the steps for all of your seedlings. Carefully insert the pole into the ground close to the plant, without stabbing the pot. 

Make sure to water them generously. The reason that we are putting the pots in with them is because at the end of the growing season, if you enjoyed the flowers, you will have pot tubers that grow inside of the pot for next year.

Starting from the furthest leaves, count two to three sets in, and pinch off any smaller growth there where it connects to the stem. Try to mainly remove the undeveloped parts that don't really look like leaves yet, particularly the ones in the middle and top.

After you have finished pinching, the plant will grow bushier, instead of being skinny and tall.