For most of us, it’s the end of dahlia season (pause for dramatic sniffle).

But here in Cape May, we get a bit of a grace period, our first frost doesn’t usually show up until early November.

And according to the long-range forecast, it looks like the weather will stay pleasantly clement (yes, that’s my new favorite word) through mid-November.

I’m grateful, because it gives me just enough time to sneak in a few more cool-hardy annuals for early spring blooms.

When I first started the flower farm, I thought I had to dig up my dahlia tubers every fall.

That’s what all the professional flower farmers did. So I did, too .. spending hours elbow-deep in wet soil, separating every single tuber like I was in some sort of botanical assembly line.

Then one day, my neighbor Laura casually mentioned that she never digs hers up and, get this, they come back beautifully every year. (Insert record scratch here.)

At first, I thought maybe she just got lucky.

But as I started talking to other flower farmers in my same garden zone, I kept hearing the same thing: they were leaving their dahlias right in the ground, too, with great success.

That’s when I thought, okay, maybe all this digging and dividing isn’t the hard-and-fast rule I once believed it was.

So last year, I decided to rebel. I skipped the digging entirely.

Here’s what I learned: Dahlia tubers will rot if they stay wet or freeze, but in Cape May’s mild winters, that risk is actually pretty low, especially if you cover them right.

And honestly, I didn’t have the ideal storage setup indoors anyway.

Keeping them at the perfect humidity and temperature so they don’t shrivel or rot? It’s like babysitting root vegetables.

No thanks.

Instead, I left my tubers in the ground, covered them with about 6–8 inches of mulch (mostly leaves), and laid landscape fabric over top to keep out the rain.

When spring rolled around, 99% of them came back happy and healthy, sprouting in late May to my delight.

Now, if you’re new to dahlias, here’s the magical thing: each tuber with an “eye” is a genetic twin of the mother plant.

So if you divide one clump and get 6–7 tubers, you’ve basically cloned your plant army. (Exciting, yes, but also overwhelming when you already have a small field’s worth of them.)

And that’s why you’ll often see professional flower farmers carefully dividing each individual tuber, because they’re usually planning to sell them. (Makes sense when you think about it, but for the rest of us? Totally optional.)

Since I’m not selling tubers, I no longer bother separating them one by one. I just quarter big clumps every few years to keep things manageable.

Here’s my simple end-of-season plan:

  1. Chop the stalks down low once the season’s done (which is about now).
  2. Relocate any you want to move — this is a good time to quarter them if they’ve gotten hefty.
  3. Mulch generously (I use leaves) and cover with landscape fabric before the fall rains arrive.
  4. In late April or early May, start watching for sprouts, then remove the fabric and let them do their thing.

So for my local Cape May gardeners: save yourself the dirty work this year. Skip the digging unless you really want to divide or move them, your dahlias will thank you (and so will your back).

Now, I’ve even seen flower farmers in much colder areas, think Colorado, successfully overwinter their dahlia tubers in the ground.

So if you live somewhere chillier than Cape May, you could always experiment: dig up half and mulch-and-cover the other half.

I think it’s worth trying, because if you find out you don’t have to dig, you’ve just saved yourself a whole lot of muddy work next fall.

If you want a great visual, check out ​Kristine Albrecht’s​ dahlia videos (she’s the queen of tuber talk).