3,226 Garden Web Discussions | Dahlias
Hi Phyl! I haven't been checking this forum too much yet this season. Sorry but I would never have seen your post if a friend hadn't called me and told me she saw a post to me at GW!
I don't leave the links up for that long because it takes a lot of bandwidth from my webpage.
I got my stargazer seeds (Unwins brand) from a local nursery, but I know you can get them from Park Seed.
Good luck and I hope you like them as much as I do!
Thanks so much, Jackie! I didn't know what the red Xs meant. I'll look into Park Seed. I love dahlias, but know that I am just too busy to have to store them for the winter correctly, so I don't want to spend $4-6 per tuber! So I am hoping that seeds will work. :0) Phyl
Hi Phyl,
What is a grocery-store type dahlia? Assuming you mean tubers mass packaged for the big box stores. Which also means that the dahlia in your package may or may not be Bahama Apricot. There's a 20-25% chance that it will not.
Bahama Apricot isn't a large flowering dahlia. It is a shogun. The blooms are 4" which are perfectly nice for your cutflower bouquets.
Our last frost date is the same as yours. We plant our tubers for field production usually around May 1. The last couple of years, it has actually been the last week in April. Ground temperature is the most important factor to consider when planting your tuber/s. Ideally, dahlias need 5 hours of sun. Dahlia plants grow taller here in the midwest and the northeast.
Then again, you could start your tuber in a pot now; and, transplant it out when you're planting your other plants in the garden. You would have blooms sooner.
You can Google Shogun Bahama Apricot for a photo. In the future, you may want to check the Big List for information on dahlias and suppliers.
Trish
Here is a link that might be useful: The Big List
Trish,
Thanks so much for all your help here! Coming from you, I know it is EXCELLENT advice! Yes, I meant that I picked it up at my grocery store cheap. I'm so excited to see my first crocus...so tired of winter. I bookmarked The Big List for future reference. :0) Phyl
Yes, probably, I have too much stuff out in the garden to remember to dig them up in the fall. I also have some tubers I saved from last year in peat out in the garage. It's funny, I work at a garden center, & we only sell containerized dahlias now, because my boss says people are impatient, they don't want to plant tubers, they want it blooming or ready to bloom now! Of course, we won't get those in for awhile, until it warms up...I did read somewhere about planting them half height in the pot & then adding soil gradually as it sprouts, is this right?
I wish I could forget to dig up in the fall..... Too wet and cold here though.
I don't know that you need to do the half height planting and slow covering with soil in a pot. Pots, and their soil, get more widespread sun exposure and heat up better and dry out faster than garden beds. I had great luck just plunking a tuber in a large pot at full 6 inch depth last year. But in cool, moist spring soil, the slowly-filling-the-hole- method is a good idea out in the garden.
Thanks Huey, :)
Watering is something I can do something about, but what about the fertilizer? Is there something I can do or should I just let it ride out?
I asked a gal at my local nursery and she told me that the best thing I could do is start hardening them and plant them outside maybe next week. So I moved the lil guys to my garage to "harden". If they die, I guess I learned some lessons about how not to grow Dahlias lol. At least the local dahlia society is holding a tuber sale in a couple weeks, so I have something to fall back on.
Wait until after the danger of frost has passed- otherwise they'll die. When you do transplant you can plant them deeper so they don't flop over- like you can tomatoes. Take off a couple of rows of leaves & put them in deep & you'll get more tubers where the leaf nodes were.
I don't think so, I'm sorry! I already have tubers that I bought. I am running out of space too. I'm going with Thomas Edison, Le Baron, and Minnesota. I got them at Costco, with many tubers in the pack, so I'm all set! Sorry girlndocs! Did you check Costco if you belong? I also got some at Bartell's Drugs of all places. Single tuber packs of some really pretty looking ones. $1.99 a tuber! Do you have any Bartell's near you?
Of course, you can repot if you wish to. I usually do. However, if you have a pot big enough for them, and you don't mind lugging it in and out, as dictated by the local weather (NO FROST ALLOWED), then you could put them into a larger pot if that is where you want them to be for the summer. Personally, I find the big pots too heavy to lug in and out.
It will grow 3-5 shoots from around the where one you cut off was. You can take many cuttings- sometimes I designate a tuber for cuttings only so I don't have to worry about killing it off but I've not had one die yet & sometimes I do 10-20 cuttings off of one tuber. I've never done more than that off of one but only because that's all I've needed.
Year round gardener, My experience has been when you take above 8 cuttings the tuber is weakened and is slow to grow and may not even bloom. I would think it would depend on the strength of the tuber as some are more vigorous than others. Gilly Simmons from Anderson, SC, one of the best growers in the South, always used 8 as a max if you still wanted to plant the original tuber.
The bonus when you plant a sprouted tuber deep enough to cover a couple of leaf nodes is that at those buried leaf nodes you will get MORE tubers at each node than if you just had the tuber planted at the regular depth. Just let their little tips poke out a tiny bit & they'll grow like crazy.
Check out the biglist....they have all the suppliers if you
can't find anyone to trade with.
DB
I'm going to give him a try. I have pink-shade lilies in that same bed, and plan on putting kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate there too, so I think with Thomas and some wine-colored coleus, it'll be a really dramatic wine and pink late-summer bed.
It's a funny thing, when I Googled it, so many of the commercial pics of Thomas Edison were obviously photoshopped to be more purple/blue toned. But the amateur photos uniformly showed more of a magenta shade, so I figure I'm good.
Kristin
I had to give up on the Fred Meyer tubers. After a week under a warm light with damp peat moss I still couldn't see a single eye :( So I ordered another Thomas from Swan Island Dahlias and I'm going to return those others.
Krista