3,226 Garden Web Discussions | Dahlias
Katy-"plant like tomatoes" means you can plant them deeper than they have been growing in the pots. Remove the bottom couple of rows of leaves & put them in deep. Your plant will be sturdier & as a bonus it will grow more tubers at the leaf nodes.
Beverly- to harden them off you put them outside in a semi-shady spot during the day- not too hot or windy a spot. Then you take them inside at night. You can, over a week or 2 get them used to more & more sunshine but still take them in if it's going to frost.
1- You can add soil so that just the shoot is out- & add more as it grows. When you plant out, plant deeper like you would a tomato transplant.
2-If they get 2' tall you'll just have a ready-made garden when you plant out!
3-Go ahead & pinch them at 3 sets of leaves- or around 1- 1 1/2' tall.
4- You can still get away with 2 to a stake- one on either side.
5- Just treat them as one plant with enough space around for good circulation. Later in the summer you can take off the bottom couple of rows of leaves to permit better circulation.
6- Have fun! They're not at all hard to grow!!
I whacked off my very long or large tubers, painted the wound with sulfur dust and pot them up just like that. Last year, I noticed that my dahlias with large tubers grew a lot of leaves but not as many flowers as before. I still have several more large tubers to pot up. I'll whack them all off one by one before planting. :-)
HOW BIG ARE YOUR SLUGS? If they are as bg as our slugs they can stretch themselves up and over 3" easily. We have really big slugs here! If they are the small kind it might work that low down. I would put the band around the top, myself. Also make sure there is nothing close to your bed that the slugs could climb up and then swing over into the bed on. THey are masterful gymnests!
Thanks for the advice, Lizalily.
You know I've never taken the time to actually measure my slugs. Sounds like a slimy task to me! ;-)
Your point is duly noted and I'll check out the little buggers to see if they are petite or gigantor variety.
I'll put the copper band around the top now.
p.s. the vision of a slug gymnast doing a tuck, pike, and double back flip onto my dahlias is quite amusing!
After having most of my tubers dry up badly 2 years ago when placed into shavings in a cold room, I wrapped them into saran last year and placed them into my crisper of my fridge which is a constant 40 degrees. I removed them and laid them out into trays 2 weeks ago. Some had eyes beginning to grow. Out of 200 I lost about 10 to rot. I had so many tubers from each plant it didn't matter that I lost them. They are just as firm as they were when I put them there last November.
Halloween day I cut the stocks down to 6" and waited 2 weeks before digging them up. Out of 40 Dahlias I could clearly see where the eyes were on most of them. I used an exacto knife to cut them.
The other tip I read once is never place Dahlia tubers directly on a cement floor. Place several layers of newspaper under them first.
I hope this has helped.
We grow our giants in the show gardens 2 to a stake, stakes 3' apart with the rows 3' apart.
In the seedling gardens the plants are 18" apart with the rows 3' apart. It doesn't seem to hurt anything to have them that close to each other & you can still get down the rows to deadhead & groom them.
I plant all of mine 15" apart and 2' between rows and the blooms are not degraded. Dahlias can take crowding and still have excellent blooms. Some commercial growers plant one foot apart with two rows back to back and then six feet between the double rows. You need to use a lot of organic material with a rate I have seen published of 6lbs of Black Kow composted manure per plant in the bed.
Thanks guys for the advice. Sounds really easy , I'm so glad no pruning back like roses. How about when it gets really cold :-) like in the 40's Do I have to cover them up or will they be just bulbs in the ground with no plant and leaves??
Thanks
Nothing bad is going to happen to them in the ground.
Dahlias are native to Mexico ( Mexico´s national flower ), more specifically, they are native to the Altiplano ( the platteau that forms the central portion of the country between the Sierra Madre Occidental ( part of the Rocky Mountains ) and the Sierra Madre Oriental ( along the Gulf of Mexico ) ), I live in central Mexico so I´m in the exact geographic area origin of dahlias, I leave mine in the ground year long plant or no plant, I even plant other things on top of the tubers to cover the bed with color, so not even regular watering for the other plants has had a negative effect on the tubers resting dormant in the flowerbed.
Somebody else on this forum mentioned (and I have passed this tidbit forward myself) that Jobe's Tomato Fertilizer spikes make dahlias grow awesome. Push two into the soil, one on each side of the tuber when you plant out and every two months or so after that. I tried it myself last year and it works like gangbusters. Although there is still no substitute for proper growing conditions.
Hi Trish,
Would this be the same disease as Aster yellows? And, how have you treated your dahlias for leafhopper?
By the way, I still owe you the list of cultivars that I'll be planting this spring! From memory...here's a few - Maarn's Orange, Hy Suntan, Brookside Snowball, Arabian Night, Ted's Choice, Cornell, Superstition.
Hope all is well in Michigan!
Henry
Henry,
We treat with Sevin which is labelled for leafhoppers as well as the dreaded Japanese beetles and earwigs. And, yes. Same virus as Aster yellow.
Regarding your list of dahlias, I need some of those Ted's Choice tubers. Maarn is really nice for cutflowers. And, I like Cornell as well -- although a bit stiff in appearance. So, for that reason, we find that we use more Jessie G. Brookside Snowball is a really nice dahlia in bouquets early in the season. Later in the season, it seems to have too much center showing. So, we've been trialing other white dahlias for cutflowers. I am also curious how your Brookside Snowball tubers have been keeping in storage.
It is freezing here in Michigan thanks to a Canadian airmass I do believe! It is, however, spring in the greenhouses.
Trish
Hi - I have had great luck with starting tubers indoors, despite not exactly optimal light conditions. I even had a bunch sitting under a coffee table receving indirect light (glass top)! When they all finally went outside after risk of frost had passed, they took off nicely, and bloomed like crazy toward mid/end July right until frost. Starting them indoors really gives them a head start - I just wish I had more space - I fear that pretty soon, the dining room and living room will once again look like a crazy woman lives there!
I hope that helps,
Anna
I had great luck with mine last year. The only window I had that wasn't shaded by a tree was east: not optimum either. I started mine on Easter weekend: did the same this year. I set up a card table in front of this window and put the pots on it. Rotated the ones that were closest to the window with the ones in the back every few days.
Then when it was warmer (mid-May?) brought them outside on the deck for more pot growth until regular planting out time in late May. If it looked it was going to be too cold overnight, I pulled them into the house: that happened only twice. The increased light made them bush out quickly. Most had about 6-8 true leaves when they went into the garden. They didn't have that much time to get leggy.
They are probably startd from seed and grown in hot houses.
I have 18 that I have grown from seed this year but they are a long way from blooming size yet. They definatly cannot be planted until all danger of frost is past in your area. Same holds true for cuttings. and sprouted tubers. Since mine are all unknown, I may go ahead and set some out after the first of may here and take a chance on them making it, but still hold a few back in case of late frost. I would plant it a couple inches deeper than a 4" pot, if that is what it is in, and then fill in around it as it grows. Do they give any ideas as how tall it grows? jim
This is how I got addicted to Dahlia's last summer. I bought 2 in 4-inch pots around mother's day. They were already blooming. Since it was after my last frost date, I just planted them at the level they were at in the pot. They were border dahlias, got no higher than 18 inches with similar spread. I got regular flowers from May through September, though production tapered off as the days got shorter, and stopped just before the first frost. However, considering that they were $5 each, I considered it quite a bargain.
One was a yellow FD that looked like a ponpon (2-3 inches), the other a blood-red semi-double (2-3 inches). Both were very nice, but unfortunately there was little to no tuber production, so I couldn't really find anything to save. I later found out that they were called "border dahlias" and were grown from seed. I found some similar seed at Target around X-mas time, so likely could have started and grown my own, but decided to move on to full size Dahlias this spring.
Good luck,
Thane T. (igwiz)