Quote:
Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie
I think dahlias show a lot of promise as a farmer's market product for me, because no one else is doing it. There is one vendor who does well selling glad stems as cut flowers, but he has to dig up his bulbs every year and keep ordering new ones, which is a lot of work and no one else wants to do it.
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The typical dahlia business model is focused on the production & sales of named tubers, with flower sales being a secondary opportunity. You may want to broaden your view of this opportunity. Seeds do not come true, so vegetative reproduction is the norm for the highest quality flowers. There are a number of excellent Youtube videos on splitting tubers and you'll see that a well grown tuber will produce a significant number of saleable eye/tuber combinations. I hope you are on sand/loam since cleaning tubers grown in clay is very time consuming.
For me deer don't eat the plants, but they do serious damage if they nip out the meristem & leave it lying on the ground. The season is so short here that damage like that often means an A or AA will not ever get to flower.