Dahlia, together with chrysanthemums and tulips, is one of the most beautiful and the most willingly cultivated perennials in green areas and home gardens. Therefore, the producers seek for more effective methods of its propagation. In the years 2011–2014 in the Felin Experimental Farm of the University of Life Sciences in Lublin the research was undertaken to estimate the crowns efficiency of four Polish border dahlia cultivars. The tubers were taken out from storage in early spring, then planted in trays filled with peat and placed on the tables in a glasshouse. The soft stem cuttings snipped off from the sprouts arising from tubers were used for experiments which aim was to evaluate the quality of four types of rooted soft cuttings. It was stated that the number of sprouts appearing in spring on a mother plant depended on a cultivar and a season. Tubers of ‘Krynica’ and ‘Halinka’ cultivars formed the most sprouts. The most effective were crowns from which apical cuttings were snipped off (90–115) pieces from the 10th of February till the 20th of April. The number of soft stems that were used to obtain cuttings ‘with heel’, ‘without heel’ and 2-node’ ones ranged on average from 50 to 80 per season. The best quality rooted cuttings, in terms of a fresh weight, number of leaves and a fresh weight and number of roots, were the heel cuttings.

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