It is quite late. Even mid July might be pushing it. If you have the energy and the room, you could give them a try. Maybe tuck them in a spot where you could leave them over winter in the ground. Mulch it after the ground freezes. You'd be no worse off than if they rotted in storage but you'd have saved the digging time.

Oh my gosh- I checked your member page. You grow a key lime? I just can't picture having such a wonderful fruit in my yard. You are in that tricky warm zone and there is a lack of hot climate dahlia posters here. We need to rally the troops and beg some of the Southern dahlia growers to offer their input on how best to handle digging there. Congratulations on finding tubers. I have two cuttings that I'm eager to dig up. Only one bloomed. The other was a sprout leftover int he garden from last year, in my way for a new tuber in May, but I couldn't kill it! So I plunked the broken off sprout into the ground and off it went: no rooting hormone, no potting soil, no nothin'--- it's now 2 ft tall and I can't wait to excavate to see what I find.

Well I went out and pulled off the dark brown/black ones that have dried out. Cracking open the shell was a lot like cracking open some peanuts. Anyways, the beans that came out were perfect. I still have the original batch of soybeans from the asian market. My grown ones look almost exactly the same. The only difference is that mine are just not quite as fat. Also I'm growing some mung beans. Same deal there, I pulled off a dry pod and cracked it open. The beans look the same as the bag of mung beans I grew them from. I'm still amazed I got any beans at all from these plants. I mean I truly treated them like crap. They were not at the edge of my balcony but close to my door. So they only got direct sunlight for about 5 hours a day. The stuff at the edge get 8 or 9 hours. I grew them in crappy $4 for 40 pound "organic" potting soil. No fertilizers added or anything. I really haven't been very diligent with watering them either. These bean plants never had any good looking leaves. They've all been full of brown spots and frayed edges. I've built one of those earthbox type self watering containers and have a tomato plant and basil plant in it. They've grown so quick and look so healthy. I'm going to build some more and I want to try a soybean plant in there to see how it does when it's treated nice.

If you want to be successful with lily bulbs, just like we in north have to dig the bulbs that can't freeze, you must provide cold. I have heard of mixed results with placing the bulbs in the fridge, once they have browned back, in a pot of soil, being very careful not to overwater. As Alina stated 'the bulbs never go dormant', but rot easily in these conditions. You must not store apples with them, as the apples give off ethylene gas and cause the bulbs to sprout prematurely and thus, you end up with only foliage. I agree nothing ventured nothing gained....go for it! Flora