Winter Work
Harvesting, handling, and preserving tubers
Flagging and tagging is a slow burn through the fall, but it always ramps up when the evening air carries a chill. That’s when you know the clock is running out. You can’t identify a plant for much longer than a few hours after a frost, and you wouldn’t want to be second-guessing yourself over blooms that have already been burned black.
I keep a list of planting rows from spring, but accidents happen: seedlings throw sports, mislabels creep in, or I’ll find a plant performing better than expected in a spot I hadn’t planned for. By late fall it’s often damp or pouring, and pulling out a paper list, or worse, fumbling with a phone or tablet with cold wet hands, is more trouble than it’s worth. That’s why I rely on bright pink field flags and the same color flagging tape. The tape gets the variety name, tied twice and loosely to the flag. Later, those ribbons move with the clumps to the crates, saving me the work of scribbling names in the mud with numb fingers.
As I move down the rows, I can feel the change in the air and in the life around me. The orb weaver spider is gone from her web. Insects still follow their instincts, but slower now, dulled by the cold. A bumblebee might cling to a bloom for days, tucked in against the rain as if unwilling to admit the season is over. The dahlias themselves are desperate, blowing open blooms in a final attempt at seed, though it is much too late for that now.
Clusters of chickadees flit through the seed heads and brambles at the field edges, pecking at insects and fruit to fatten up for the winter. High wisps of cirrus clouds gather in the afternoon sky, softening the lowering light as long shadows reach across the rows. The summer burn ban has passed, and now little smoke trails appear above the trees; the sweet smell of fall bonfires occasionally drifts by. Garden spiders sit at the center of their webs as if soaking in the last warmth, hoping for a late-season honey bee, their threads hung with dew that never quite dries. The geese have long gathered in their groups; now great flocks fill the sky and the air with sound, cresting around Halloween here. The crickets and frogs that filled the nights with noise through late August and September are quieter now, fading to the last few chirps and croaks.
From a distance the rows could still be mistaken for a healthy cut-flower field. But walk closer and you see the truth: flowers with bruised petals, stems stretched too long, blooms bobbing at the slightest breeze. This is decline, as beautiful as any other season, though harder for us to love. Weary, human eyes see it as the slow walk toward death. But linger a while and it becomes something else, a time of reflection. A cucumber beetle or grasshopper is no longer an enemy, just another survivor of the long summer, like an old soldier from a war no one can remember the reason for. You could eat all the petals you want now, maybe even offer them a little salute.
Mornings bite cold enough that I start the car early, letting it warm before the school run. Then I walk the seedling field, mostly collapsed after a season that began blooming back in July. Dew lays so heavy it mimics frost. The fog gathers in the valley and doesn’t lift until noon. All the apples have fallen. Storms have shaken down the Douglas fir needles and dropped the broad yellow leaves of the bigleaf maples across the rows. Sometimes frost doesn’t come until December, but by then the curtain is already down. This is the last chance to flag and tag, the final call before winter closes in.
Digging and Curing
The work starts before a single fork hits the soil. First I clear space in the barn, the garage, and often one of the high tunnels. These become staging grounds, places to dry and clean the clumps. Not wash, just clean enough to knock off the worst of the soil. Each harvest has to be moved under shelter before nightfall, and that’s not always as simple as it sounds. If I misjudge the sunset, the job ends under floodlights, cold seeping in with the risk of accidents. Every evening the same question hangs in the air: do I have the tools gathered, the space ready, and the crates stacked so the tubers can be tucked away before the dark sets in?
Shelter is everything. A good space has air circulation and, if possible, a little heat source. Nothing too warm, sixty degrees is about the ceiling, or the clumps start to dry too fast. Each row in the field has its own stack of bulb crates, enough to hold the clumps once they’re out of the ground.
Before digging, the dead tops need to come down. Some growers mow straight over the rows, but I’ve never liked that. If the plants are still alive, mowing scatters virus and bacteria everywhere, undoing a whole summer of careful disease control. That’s why I wait for frost. Once the plants are blackened and truly dead, I cut them back with a string trimmer or hedge trimmer, angling the debris away from the rows. If frost hasn’t come, the job is slower: hand-cutting each plant with loppers, dunking the blades in bleach solution after every stem. It adds hours, sometimes days, but it keeps disease from spreading.
I always leave at least six inches of stem above ground. It makes a perfect handle. In the good soil of the tunnels or the back field, I can grab the stem and schlock the clump out of the ground in one pull. The top field is different, more clay, heavier going. There I work with a spading fork, loosening both sides of the row before pulling. That way the clumps come out one after another, quicker than if I tackled them individually.
Once lifted, the clumps are laid along the rows. Heavy clods of clay are knocked away and thrown into the long grass. Clay is an enemy in storage: wet, it promotes rot; dry, it wicks moisture from the tubers. Better to get rid of it now and replace it later with compost. Then I move down the line with a long-handled lopper, cutting off the stem handles so the clumps fit neatly into crates.
Each clump goes into a bulb crate, tagged three times, once on each handle with flagging tape, and once with a loose tag tossed inside with the clumps. Some of the heavier clumps get a quick rinse with the hose to shed sodden soil, especially if the clay won’t let go. The crates stack on pallets, and the tractor with pallet forks hauls them to the barn.
There they sit for two days, drying under the hum of fans. After that, the crates are moved again, this time into the storage room, which for me is the converted garage. We’ve talked about building a new space just for storage, but distance makes me nervous. Hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stock belongs close to the house, where I can keep an eye on the power during a snowstorm and fire up the generator if needed. The garage holds a good steady temperature and humidity.
The crates stack in one corner on pallets, covered with tarps. Over time, the pile shrinks as clumps are divided, the shelves filling instead with totes of labeled tubers. The rhythm of the work shifts then, from the muddy hustle of harvest to the long patience of storage and division.
Storage and Division
Once the clumps are stacked and resting, the storage room takes on a different rhythm. They sit at around forty degrees with humidity hovering between seventy and eighty percent, waiting their turn to be divided. The mud has long since dried away. Now it’s a dusty mix of fir shavings and vermiculite occasionally kicked up into the air after a long day of dividing, the whole setting softened by the faint smell of cinnamon powder, like apple pie resting in a window of the next room.
Each clump waits. Some lie dormant for weeks, even months, their remaining soil clinging just enough to slow moisture loss. Strip them too clean and they shrivel. Leave too much soil and you risk rot and a mess of dirt and grit that will blunt your tools quick. It is always a balance, and one you only learn through trial and error. Consistency is everything, which is why I divide in the same location where they’ve been stored, same air, same temperature, same humidity. The conditions are good for the tubers, though not for me. Long hours standing in the cold stiffen the shoulders, numb the fingers, and turn the whole space into a test of endurance.
When division starts, the real grind begins. The work is steady and repetitive, and switching tools makes the hours bearable, knife for a while, then snips, giving wrists and tendons a chance to rest. Pain in the wrist or elbow is the body’s warning to stop before the work stops you. I keep rechargeable hand warmers in my pockets, and slipping my hands into them after wrestling with a cold, stubborn clump feels like a small reward for the effort.
The Dahlia Handbook will be available to purchase later this fall (2025)