Oh you should have seen how many 'non eyes' I had...but I just hid them in the compost pile.

Bucketsful, yard bagsful, and just plain old piles of non eyed tubers/stems,and trimmed tuber roots deck my halls long before the holly. Outdoor halls that is...okay, some ended up in the garage due to dividing in inclement weather.

Big city al, if you don't want to post a photo of the massacre, that's fine, but I'd pay a good fee for an audio tape of the sordid process! I imagine any one of us up against a 3 year tuber mass would provide some sort of entertainment for those interested in such things as taming the dahlia clump.
Congratulations on completing the task.

Got mine dug up yesterday. It was supposed to get down to 22 F so all 200 had to be dug! :-(

Was so tired and cold and wet.

Now I hope that I don't lose a bunch while going through the "process."
tc

Dug and cleaned the last of mine today. :-D I had been digging up a few 3 weekends in a row. Most got divided to single tubers, a few are double, and a few got packed in produce bags. None looks as neat as Poochella's or bernie's. I hope most will make it through winter.

My heart went pitter patter when I saw a bunch that I had broken or slashed or simply cut off by mistake. Oh well. I hope I will be luckier than I thought comes spring.

An audio tape would indeed be...interesting.

And I think it would be cute to see a photo gallery of how all of us looked in the process - especially those who dug in winter. I wore muddy ski-pants, various hats, my dad's plaid shirts, enormous sweatshirts, mis-matched gloves, big rubber boots, etc. A Fashion Massacre, to be sure. But I got 'em all dug in 3 sessions this week...
following our first killing frost.

I think people walked their dogs past my house while I was outside, just to see what the heck I was up to THIS time.

Sadly, many tubers got nicks and injuries, wrung necks, etc. I'm afraid to store those yet - and am unsure if they should dry fully, including cuts, before bleaching?

Am about half done with dividing. Am wondering what the odds of recovery are...for different kinds of Tuber anomalies? Anyone wanna share war/survival stories? (My old-social-worker nerves just can't take just tossing anything that may still be viable - so I need more info and weirdie-survival stories - to be convinced my theories are solid...)

There is no room for fashion in my garden- clothes must be beat up and willing to take on extraordinary amounts of dirt. Martha Stewart I'm not. One thing that I found really useful for all the cold, wet spraying when digging clumps is to wear rain pants! How simple and yet very effective for staying warmer and dryer. Sox and shoes are a different story. They get changed from 'pathetic garden tennies' to 'even more pathetic garden tennies but dry ones' regularly as I can't stand wet feet. Maybe Santa will bring me some nice lined waterproof boots....

Jules, depending on severity, my experience is that nicks and injuries will often callous over. The cuts can be dried to the touch in a couple hours, dusted (if desired) and stored. No problem. Wrung or broken necks get tossed here; too prone to rot. I just now went out and went through my 'garbage bag' of tubers that got tossed for one fault or another while wrapping. Many thin ones had shrivelled too much, some were beginning to mold on necks or tail ends (no sulphur dust yet) but about a dozen were good enough for me to try to salvage. So I dusted them and stuck them in a tub of vermiculite. It took me all of 5 minutes and perhaps I'll have 12 more tubers. Some of them I tossed just because I was sick of tubers!

As for war stories, I have none except for the spring rotters I've dug up and cut off to a mere stub of a tuber, but with green growth intact. Those have often gone on to survive, although slower to grow than healthy tubers.
My thinking is to just try to save them- if they don't eye up or rot, toss them and be done with it, but at least you gave them a chance.

One last thing, I do the bleach thing right away. So the sequence is dig,wash, divide and label, 5-30 minute bleach soak (that way the bleach gets into all cuts/gouges/nicks,) dry overnight, dust and re-label (darn me, that takes so long but I like to see easily what tuber I'm dealing with in Spring) then wrap or store. If I decide to trim long or fat tubers during the wrapping process, I let the cuts dry a couple hours before proceeding with dusting/wrapping.

It's 24 degrees here and I am so, so glad to be done with that whole sordid process. Hope you finish up soon.