3,226 Garden Web Discussions | Dahlias
Man, Plantlady how do you manage to keep marigolds in WA?
I plant them in a garden and they're stripped, absolutely devoid of foliage overnight courtesy of the slugs.
The only way I can hope to grow one is high up in a rail rider or hanging planter. In a whiskey barrel planter I have to use slug bait or the same thing happens: gone overnight.
What's your secret?
Pooch
Full sun is a must- my marginal ones get about 4 hours plus a little late afternoon sun for an hour. Most of them get 6-8 hours a day. Your soil sounds good. If you leave them in the ground in zone 5 without winter protection they might be mush, but then you'd have no growth whatsoever, so that makes no sense.
Fertilizer is good, I use Osmocote for ease. Others don't use any at all.
Water once or twice a week, depending on rainfall. Don't want them too wet, especially when under a foot tall.
Plant tubers about 4-6 inches deep, but again I'd mulch heavily in late Fall to protect from Winter freezing in your climate. An open stalk is a funnel to invite rains down into the tuber clump and rot it. Cover it up with something or wrap it in foil, or cut it off. Better yet, I'd dig up the tubers, divide them, store them and get more plants for yourself or trading.
Living in zone 5 as I do, you can't leave them in the ground for the winter. It's just to cold.In the spring, I wait till the ground is up to 70 degrees before I plant. If the ground is to cold , they will either rot or you will get stunted growth and no flowers.
Not enough sun or a fertilizer to high in nitrogen which could cause a lack of flowers. I use bonemeal for a fertilizer as I don't have dogs in my neighborhood or as Poochella I use osmocote.
Another thought, if your soil is not tilled deep and the roots hit clay, it will stunt the growth of your dahlias. These are only my guesses but I hope it helps.
Check out Swan Island Dalhias http://www.dalhias.com/ Go to visit the dahlia shop, type in Rip City under dahlia locator.
Sometimes Walt take a machete to a big clump & just gives it an almighty whack through the center & then whacks it again so as to get 4 clumps & by that time it's easier to manage with the clippers! (I hide when he starts chopping about with the machete!)
David,
My thinking is that if he does not plant them, they will shrivel up and not be very strong, if indeed viable in another year. What I would do, is plant them in large pots ( 1 - 2 gallon size), set them into the garden when the danger of frost is over, pull up the pots when it is time to move, take them to their new abode, and then plant them.
Or.......give them to his friends to keep for a year, and let them make cuttings, and then take them back indoors at his new home in the fall.
It is a lot of extra work, but I did the latter when we were moving, and it really paid off. My friend was happy to get the cuttings, and I was happy not to have to lug the plants around all over the place, considering I was in 5 residences within 2 months because my home was not ready in time for me. I can laugh about it now, but I surely wasn't laughing then.
I agree, for what it's worth, with Jroot. No bulbs or tubers would make it a whole season being unplanted, un-nourished and be expected to be viable the following year.
Jroot, I hope you never ever have to move again- ever.
I moved 14 times in 5 years during college and early marriage and I hope to never move again, ever. But 5 times in 2 months is hideous!
Poochella
Not I, but I just got the original small Cornell in the mail today- so happppppppppppy.
Below is a link that mentions a Giant Ball Cornell. I don't know how they can swipe the name like that or how 'giant' it really might be.
Here is a link that might be useful: Giant Cornell mention
Glad to hear you got your Cornell! It's a lovely flower and last a long time in a vase. Gaint hmmmmmmmmm! I think perhaps it's in the minds eye as to what is gaint. Gaint to me would be 10 to 12 inches, what's gaint to someone else might be whole different thing. ( Can't wait for my package to arrive, LOL, dahlia eye-tis)
Poochella,
This $3.00 charge sounds like a scam. Ebay has no way of getting your credit card number unless you give it to them. Neither does anyone else...UNLESS someone put spyware on your computer. I would invest in an anti-virus program to check for that ASAP.
Also, if you have some kind of auto-fill program that remembers your personal information, like Gator, get rid of it by going to Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs. It's not safe to have ANY program remembering your personal information, even IE. Go into IE's preferences and disable AutoFill.
Good luck. I would call your credit card company and have them check to see if that charge really came from Ebay. I doubt it did. There are hundreds of scammers that mirror Ebay and other sites, in the hope that you will stumble onto their site through a fake email or a web search. Don't trust ANY site unless YOU typed it into your browser. Links can be disguised and are not to be trusted.
Contact Ebay too. If they charged you, they will be able to tell you, and if they didn't they will want to know that someone is scamming you in their name.
Christine
Good advice Christine. I don't know that I ever actually saw the charge on the final bill, this was over the holidays when spending was a blur. I should check into that. But it was read off as an Ebay fee by the courtesy security caller.
It's a shame that something as useful and powerful as the internet can be turned into a scam grounds by the likes of the people you refer to. I much prefer real worms and dirt.
Poochella
Padma,
As Tina said you definitely want to give them "room to grow", even as much as 24 inches apart.
My soil is VERY rich from combost/bonemeal and TLC.
I say this, because, the dahlias I grow, end up being closer to 6 ft tall. So I have, from the beginning (as per Bernie :o), use 8 foot lengths of reinforcement bars (re-bar) when I plant.
The tubers could have been a gift from last year of "bedding" dahilas, that grew first year 18 inches tall. Second year was almost 4 ft.
My point, other than I LOVE to garden, is that it is better to go taller, then to disturb the tubers later and risk losing them.
Good luck,
God Bless,
Di
Hi Padma,
In a 4 x 6 foot bed, I'd barely have courage to plant more than 6-8 dahlia tubers if they are not the short 'bedding' dahlias. I've had luck planting some shorter ones 12-18 inches apart, but more often 24 inches is the minimum distance. Some of those monsters get big, as Di said.
Ten inches deep sounds ok- a nice bed for tubers to rest in as long as it is well-drained.
Precautions to take: don't break your tubers. Stake when you plant so you don't stab them later. Some people use bone meal dug into the planting hole to help the plant roots along, but I find that it is a huge dog magnet and have lost tubers to inquiring paws. grrrrr....
Don't over-water early, and don't plant when it's too cold, soil below 60º or so. Wet and cold are a bad combo.
Good luck with your planting!
Poochella
Hi Chey John,
Please pass on my Thanks to your son serving in Iraq next time you communicate. I hope he comes home safely and in time to enjoy some blooms from your garden.
Foil is presumably used to prevent excess water from soaking into and rotting the tuber mass down the hollow stalk of a cut off dahlia. You might as well leave it there until April showers have quit and you are reasonably sure the tubers have not rotted.
The other thing would be to cut off the stem entirely and put soil over that spot so water wouldn't be so much of a worry anyway.
You should see shoots coming up whenever mid to late-Spring hits in your area. I left some clumps in last winter and dug one up- half of it is mush, so I have some excavating and cleaning up to do to get rid of that rot. There were already new sprouts shooting forth however. Yay!
Poochella
Thanks Poochella for the info. I am so glad I didn't remove them yet. So if I cut the stalks and cover with soil, this wouldn't still allow water to enter and cause rot. I had though that it might be ok this time of year since they would be getting watered by the rain anyway.
I also want to thank you for making me update my member page. My son did return safely from Iraq last September and was quickly deployed again right before he was to come home for Thanksgiving. But it wasn't back to Iraq and for that I am more than thankful. He gets out near the end of this year and I will be overjoyed. Thanks so much for the kind words! I will relay your message to him.
Chey
Is it somewhat similar to this? It's a collarette named "Mr. Jones" and I grabbed the photo just to see if the little circle of white was what you were describing, not necessarily the whole bloom.
or this? Christmas Star from Connell's Dahlias.
Gosh those are pretty! The more I look at them, the more I want them LOL. It sure sounds like a collarette dahlia and you can search for them all over the w.w.w.
Nice photos JRoot. So great of you to offer a pictorial explanation. What's wrong with your fingernails? They're so clean!
I would just add, David, that any tubers with broken necks hanging from your clump are only going to take up space where the new plant might make tubers during the season, so cut them off with a pruners or scissors. I have a clump I just got from a store that I will try to photograph tomorrow that will show this exact thing and which I'm going to cut off.
I should also start a thread called "Will This Tuber Ever Have an Eye?" So you can all vote your input on photos of various tubers that are slower than molasses to show an eye. I much prefer those that are early sprouters at this time of year.
Poochella
Dig them up & divide them up & plant single tubers. If they have been in the ground for a couple of years they get weak, leggy & fewer blooms. They need to be divided at least every other year- ideal is every year. Fungicide is necessary if you have black spots - some of the mildew mold can be controlled with a spraying of skim milk - & be sure to snip off the bottom leaves as the summer goes on to improve circulation in the bed & prevent mildew.
Plantlady2
Thank you for responding. From your profile you sound like a Dahlia Master!. My previous gardens never had these problems. For 10 years I always dug them up in the fall and replanted in the spring. They were beautiful. Last spring when I did the planting I didn't have any old tubers to plant. We moved here in mid August and I could not dig any up to take with me. Everything was bought fresh, except the ones that grew from the previous owner. I was digging around in the beds over the weekend. I found allot of holes and tunnels. Maybe Moles/Voles were the demise of the dahlias last season. This spring I decided to only plant the dahlias in large pots to see if it makes a difference. I hate to give up on such beautiful flowers! Thanks.......Dianne
It's a really different bloom- we used to grow it before we started to specialize in AA sized ones. Pink Giraffe is nice, too. The problem with them both is they aren't very good keepers- but they put out loads of nice unusual blooms- about 4' diameter & kind of striped yellowish orange & darker bronze for Giraffe-- Pink Giraffe does the same kind of unusual markings only in light pink & a bit darker pink. I seem to recall that they had really good stems, too which made for good arrangment flowers. Clack's lists Giraffe w/ picture but it looks more like Pink Giraffe to me.
Here is a link that might be useful: 
If "Ellen Houston" is a single dahlia then that might be the one I bought last year. Nurseries out here often sell dahlias and alstroemerias without specific variety names, can be kind of frustrating.
My single dahlia was lovely and bloomed beautifully, until my husband fell on top of it! I am hoping it comes back this year. The foliage was gorgeous.
A new one for 2005 - hope it looks as good in my garden
Nippon ......
D.
Here is a link that might be useful: