New cuttings from strong, healthy shoot tips produce the healthiest and most vigorous plants (I covered propagating dahlia shoot tip cuttings last year). But heat and good light are needed early on in the year.
Failing this, shop-bought tubers (which are produced from one-year-old cuttings) are the next best alternative. New plants produce more vigorous root systems than older ones. However, there is a downside in that fewer flowers are produced.
But I wonder if we took an over-wintered clump of budding tubers, divided it into separate tubers, each with its own shoot bud, then laid them out in a wheel formation, would this reproduce the increased vigour whilst maintaining the number of shoots (and therefore flowers)?
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