Front Porch: In the battle with Mr. Squirrel, the dahlia is the big loser

I’ve tried my hand at growing dahlias. It has not been a success.

My friend Kris is the dahlia queen. She grows any number of varieties of the beautiful show-off flower in a patch in her backyard and cuts blooms for bouquets for her house during the season. In the fall, she digs the tubers out of the ground, cleans and wraps them for winter storage (not too hot, not too cold), then in spring, prepares the soil, unwraps the tubers and re-plants those which have survived to bloom again.

I’ve admired her dedication for years, a commitment I was not particularly keen to make myself. One year she convinced me to try one tuber. What kind would I like? One that produces big, showy blooms, I said. And so, she placed into my hands one John Meggos dahlia tuber.

It came with instructions, samples of her own concoction of soil amendments or fertilizer or minerals or whatever it was that made magic in her garden. I planted the tuber in a big pot on my deck and chatted with her during the summer about watering, additional fertilization and the like.

Lo and behold. John Meggos produced the most magnificent blossoms with dark red with yellow streaks out on my deck, where it was safe from the deer that roam through my yard. And the blooms graced my home in cuttings, as well, in all their splendor.

I removed the tuber in the fall and managed not to kill it over the winter. Kris contributed another two tubers the next spring, so I then had three dahlias growing on my deck, along with other potted flowers. It went well. But come fall – it was an especially busy fall – I didn’t feel like fussing with them, so I hauled the pots out into the garage and left them there for the winter.

John Meggos and one other tuber survived this less-than-delicate treatment and once again produced lovely flowers, but not as many. My lack of fussing and care was no doubt largely at fault, but that year turned out to be the Summer of the Squirrel.

Mr. Squirrel, which is the kindest thing I called him that year, decided to run across my deck railing and lean in to munch down a young bulb or two. Or leap out and grab what he could as he fell off the plant. Flying bulb-stealing squirrel.

I began researching what to do about squirrels and found several commercial and home-made products to stop this behavior. Although he was a decidedly cute bushy-tailed little rodent as he hopped around the pine trees, this furry rat’s appetite for the leaves of the dahlia plants was not to be curbed.

I was appreciating him less and less, clearly. He could climb up the stem and strip a branch of its leaves in hardly anytime at all. I tried some netting around a tomato cage around the dahlia. He still wriggled his way in.

We managed to survive the season – him well-fed and me with enough flowers not to be too grumpy. Most of the time.

I tried the same over-wintering technique. This time, only John Meggos survived. I swear Mr. Gosh Darn Squirrel was sitting in a tree with a knife and fork awaiting the new sprouts. The same battles ensued, only this time Mr. Bleeping Squirrel decided that the leaves of my tomato plant were worth eating, too. He had ignored them previously.

Oh … and the stems of the dahlias suddenly turned into items of interest, so he gnawed one not quite to death.

I’d enumerate my efforts at mitigation, but that would bring back too many painful memories. And, if I may, I’d like to mention that even though I moved dahlia and tomato pots back from the railing and tried to block easy climbing access from the floor of the deck (more netting on the plant frames), he prevailed.

Then last year, I didn’t plant any tomatoes. And the final dahlia tuber – good old J.M. – had dried out over the winter. I still have flowers on my deck this year, but none that (so far) have tempted you-know-who.

And I’ve politely declined the kind offer from Kris for new dahlia tubers. It just wasn’t meant to be.