3,226 Garden Web Discussions | Dahlias
Hi Christy:
I know others will chip in with advice about watering - I personally water the soil on top very lightly if a new tuber - but most experts say you shouldn't or don't need to until they are at least 6 inches grown.
What I will comment on is that you are about to enter the wacky world of dahlias - where sometimes up is down and vice-versa. IMO, dahlias have a mind of their own. I take notes every year and last year my notes say my 'B-Man lookalike' (don't know the real name) gave me a first bloom in late June. This year, it has already bloomed in early May.
Most growers will tell you that early bloomers will bloom within 90 days, regular dahlias 105 and late bloomers 120 days. I have rarely found that to be true. Too many variables - amount of sun, how much you did or didn't water them, how good the soil is, whether snails get their feed bags on and destroy the tender shoots, whether you fertilize them and how often, etc, etc. Overall however, the 90-120 rule is close enough.
I love my dahlias but they are fickle. Best thing is to just do the best you can getting them going and then they pretty much do whatever they want from there on. Of course I leave my in ground year round so I don't go thru the digging, storing and re-potting every year.
Good luck.
Planting them in pots is different from planting in the ground. Either way the tubers need moisture in order to develop, but too much is a problem. Pots dry out fairly quickly, so definitely need to be watered. I pre-wet my potting mix, so that it is damp but not soggy, before I pop in the tuber, then let it dry out pretty good before watering it again. A potting mix with good drainage is a plus.
If you are going to leave them in pots, they better be damn big pots (minimum 5 gallon). most "dinner plates" grow 5-6 ft tall. It would be better to start them in smaller pots, as they will drain/dry out faster than a huge pot with only a tuber in it. I start mine in 4" pots, but then plant them in the ground.
Dahlias are perennials, they are just not very hardy perennials. It is possible that your mother in law has a dahlia that survives the winter. Is it planted against a south facing wall? Is it mulched heavily and kept dry over the winter? The main issues with overwintering dahlias are soil moisture level and frost penetration depth. If the ground is kept dry and frost free at the tuber depth then a dahlia should survive the winter regardless of your climate zone. If the soil is very dry it is more difficult for frost to penetrate than if their is moisture in the soil. I would expect that in much of Utah there would be very dry soil.in winter which would help insulate the tubers. A thick layer of snow that is on the ground continuously during the coldest months would act as an insulator too.
If you can have a picture of the plant, that will help confirm if it is a dahlia and possibly even its variety.
As for what works and what doesn't, others in my region also say that dahlias should be brought in for the winter, but I have had 2 years of dahlias returning from being in pots. This year, maybe the winter was too rough or perhaps last year's growing season was not good enough for them, but they did not return. However, the dahlias I had in the ground are back, so I suspect it was a container issue (I also lost 3 amaryllis bulbs in the similar way -- all the ones in pots are gone but the ones in ground are OK)
You must be in Fla or S. Cal - so nice to have so much color! I finally have crocus & hyacinth blooming, but thats about it. I can't even put my Dahlias out for another month.
I use a MacBook Pro - so not sure what IPad's have on them. If you have "Preview" on there you can pretty much do anything you need to your photos.
I've used pint-size grated cheese/takeout containers in some larger pots and it worked well. I just stacked them (with the lids on), like blocks, to the height that I wanted. When I emptied the pots at the end of the season, I just gathered up the containers and nested them for storage to reuse .
I move mine to pots as soon as they start to sprout at all. The problem with leaving them in trays like that is, as roots develop they will tangle up with each other and you will have to tear them apart.
Yes you can plant them deeper in the pots - you will certainly plant them deeper when they go outside. Cut off any leaves that have unfurled if they are going to be below the soil surface.
Its exciting to see them waking up isn't it?
Since you mentioned that you are a newer gardener I'll point out something that you may or may not have fully understood. If these were tubers that you acquired from a reputable source (mail order, store, an experienced gardener, etc.) you might as well just pot them up individually to start with. The reason some people (myself among them) plant lots of tubers close together in shallow trays and then later move them along to pots is to test them for eyes. When dividing your own clumps it is sometimes difficult to tell whether a division will have an active eye or not. I divided one clump that had over 40 tubers but I didn't expect to be able to carve them all away from the main stem with eye tissue. I just did my best to get a piece of the stem where an eye was likely to appear and then I planted them all in a shallow tray to test for eyes before potting up the active tubers.
My guess would be pink blush
Here is a link that might be useful: ADS Classifications - color
My Myrtle's Folly bit the dust 2 years ago...I loved that one!
Looked at another store for dahlias today...they had a package or 2 of 4 kinds...Akita, some plain red one, a dark purple red too much like ones I already have, and a pink one with white tips. That was it. A different store 3 days ago...1 mangled package of Arabian Night...a dahlia I really like but already have.
so many things to say about disease and under-performance!
1) change the site and the dahlia may snap out of what appears to be a disease.
2) growers always start cuttings from tubers, then grow the cuttings on to fresh tubers.
3) Myth: Disease had nothing to do with how "old" a variety is. In fact, some of the older varieties are resistant and outperform the newer hybrids. Disease is spread by insect vectors like aphids and leafhoppers - any sucking insect that passes this on from leaf to leaf.
4) some dahlias look fine, but are carriers of diseases like mosaic virus and others.
5) later sprouting varieties will perform poorly if they are shaded out by earlier sprouting varieties, so plan your plantings by this and by height.
6) some dahlias need a bit of shade - primarily reds, which can fade in full sun.
7) feeding can help chlorosis tremendously and help the plants be more disease resistant. nitrogen early on, then potash for the flowers. try to avoid too much phosphorous. kelp meal or liquid seaweed fertilizer works wonders.
i grow dahlias for fun and because i am a dahlia addict! :)
My main problem is not disease but rather open centered blossoms during hot weather. I've acquired some varieties for this season that are suppose to be more heat tolerant so hopefully that will help. I may also set up a large shade structure as that seems to be helpful in regions with intense sun.
I've personally observed that some varieties really are more prone to having open centers during hot weather. I grew Touche and Purple Joy under exactly the same conditions and almost all of the Touche flowers were useless whereas the Purple Joy blossoms were almost all very well formed.
It's still a little early to tell but I've seen a few sprouts appearing so I know that some of my outdoor clumps survived this past winter. This was one of the coldest winters here in recent memory with a low of -4F. Most winters we rarely dip much below 10F. The plastic I was using to shed water off the bed was old and started breaking up part way through the winter which was not so good.
I also tried a different method with a bunch of spare clumps that I didn't really care about. I dug the clumps whole, labeled them and then just tossed them all in a mound on a slight slope. Then I piled dirt over them and covered with sheet plastic. I've seen some sprouts coming out of the mound this past week.
I take cuttings when the shoots are 2 inches tall. They take about 12 days to root well and can be planted in the ground after about 21 days. Tubers vary tremendously in how long they take to put out two inch long sprouts. Some do so while in storage and others take a couple of weeks of sitting in warm pots under lights. If you plant a rooted cutting in the ground at the same time as you plant a tuber in the ground, the rooted cutting will bloom 2 to 3 weeks earlier than the tuber. So, long story short, you probably have some time to take some cuttings and you will definitely have lots of flowers from the cuttings. I grow over 1000 dahlia plants from cuttings each year.
If the plants are spindly, they are not getting enough light.
Do you have a fluorescent shop light you can put them under? (suspended 2-3 " from the plants)
All of the dahlias growers that I know, divide their tubers every year, this will ultimately give you more flowers, because it gives you more plants.
Pinching the tops of the plants is standard practice. It is usually done after the 3rd or 4th pair of true leaves. Pinching encourages lateral branches to grow out, plus causes the top of the plant to fork. The laterals, and the two forked branches should all develop flowers. So pinching gives you a bushier plant with lots more flowers.
Another standard practice is to only allow one central stalk to grow from each tuber. This give you a stronger central stalk, which produces larger flowers. If you are not concerned about size then you can allow multiple stalks, but on the larger flowering types, it can make it difficult to stake the plant.
Myself - if the normal bloom size of the flower is 3-4" or less, I let multiple stalks grow, otherwise I snip off additional stalks.
Hope that helps.
Dahlias have complex genetics, they hybridize easily and generally don't grow true from seed. It is why all of the seed sold is "mixed". I am not sure what you mean when you say "the variety is white".
You will not be able to tell the colors until they bloom. You may just have to move things around after they start.
I grow the small bedding dahlias from seed inside under lights every year. I start them mid February, and some are starting to bloom when I plant them out at the end of May. Dahlias like warmth, planting them out to early is more likely to slow them down, then give them a head-start.
In the fall you can try to save the tubers of the ones you like, and they will grow true to color and form the following year.