18 CULTIVATION 
much imagination to understand the plight of the poor 
plants. The crowded sprouts have neither room, nor 
food enough, and the gardener will have almost no 
blooms, poor plants, and weak, small tubers at harvest 
time. The field clumps must be divided into individual 
tubers before planting, using a strong knife, a chisel and 
mallet, sometimes a hatchet, taking great care to have 
part of the parent central stalk left upon the crown or 
bud end of the neck of each tuber. Dahlia tubers have 
no "eyes" or buds. The buds are located just where 
the neck of the tuber joins the main stem of the plant. 
This fact should be clearly understood, and is gone into 
at length in the chapter upon propagation, as is also the 
increase of dahlia plants by cuttings, a method which 
allows fifty, and even five hundred, new plants to come 
from a single tuber. Single tubers of the wonderful 
but expensive "new creations" may be purchased and 
many plants obtained from the one root. Growers use 
this method to increase stocks of rare and costly varie- 
ties. 
There are many localities where dahlia success is 
certain if the soil be merely "tickled with a hoe." All 
the necessary conditions for dahlia plants are naturally 
present. They cannot help growing well. Other 
regions present natural adverse conditions, which have 
to be overcome. One grower whose immense planta- 
tion includes sand, gravel, loam, bottom land, and 
hills, has not failed of a harvest of blooms and of roots 
