3,226 Garden Web Discussions | Dahlias
I'd say go for it. You will only be out the cost of the tuber if it doesn't work, and actually, you may be able to harvest some tubers from it for next year. And if it works, you totally win!
Some of my biggest dahlias are barely coming up and I may well have to do this with them...they were very slow germinators. Same thing happened last year with dahlias from this breeder but I got good tubers and were able to start them much earlier this year in my greenhouse.
I am only a few miles from you over the border in WI. I was gifted with a number of additional tubers late this year and just finished getting them in the ground last week. Last year some of my tubers didn't get in the ground till mid July. I still got blooms off of most of them, just not as many and not until September. All of them developed additional tubers, so I am able to see if they do better this year.
Since you have a green house and are growing them in containers, you can always move them inside when the early frosts hit. Seems a no brainer to me.
You can buy 'bulb and bloom' food and the best ratios for dahlias generally run 4-9-9 or 5-10-10, which simply means more good stuff for the blooms and buds than for the plant. But the actual growing area, location and space can produce tremendous disparities in color. My Fire Magic is currently blooming and is a vibrant reddish color - not even close to the 'fuschia' color in the Swan catalog much less what other on line vendors show for FM. Add in your particular sun variances (4 hrs, 6hrs or 8 or more hrs) and you may get unusual colors as well.
But then I live in SF where the fog usually blankets the area from late May to Sept and colors don't get washed out. However, that said, this year we have had a tremendously sunny Spring and one of my Patty Cake blooms opened and wilted within 4 days due to the sun it got. Same with my Neon Splendor - it opened that gorgeous orange shading and wilted within 4 days! Normally they stay bright for weeks.
So you can only use photos as guidelines - even the Swan Island catalog tells you the actual plant color may look different from their catalog due to the type of paper and inks used by the printers.
But Steve and Highlander are correct too. You would be amazed at how different the same dahlias look if you only look at photos. Steve is correct - many growers take pics in mid day and the colors are all washed out. The combination of different inks and time of day the pic is taken can play havoc on what you actually get.
I know there are more complete instructions on here some where, but here is a link with images of dividing tubers. I cut the spindly shoots down to about 1 1/2 " when I plant them.
In the right conditions those tubers are hardy!. My mother gave me some tubers a number of years ago that I put in a cardboard box under a table in my basement and completely forgot about them until the following July when I spotted a red flower growing out of the box, one actually bloomed!
Here is a link that might be useful: dividing tubers
I think we have about 90 or 100 in the ground this year, and 4 have not come up. Unfortunately, 3 of those are new ones. We probably have 40 or 50 different dahlias. Most of them are in dahlia beds, but we had more this year than we had space for, so we have planted some on a hillside that has lots of other things. We usually have better luck with the dahlias in their own beds, but I guess we'll see what happens. We really pack our dahlias into the beds we have, probably more than they should be!
Maybe we can do some trading sometime. I'd love to come and see what you're growing. I used to love to go to Connell's and look at their flowers each year. I live pretty close to SeaTac gardens, and I buy from him sometimes.
Wayne - the rule is to pinch them back right after that 4th leaf set begins, so what you are pinching of is only about an inch or less. I have never tried to root Dahlia tops, I doubt that hollow stem cuttings would root, if small enough to be solid , then possibly, but with Dahlias, its easier to just wait and divide the tubers.
I had never heard of tree hoppers so I googled them - wow there is an amazing variety of them - but it doesnt seem they could be responsible for severing the stems of your plants. Its not they way they work, they are suckers, not chewers. there must have been cut worms or something else at work as well.
I get some occasional insect damage to my Dahlias, whats weird to me is it seems one variety of dahlia will attract a certain kind of insect, and a different type another, then others are left completely alone. I mostly use insecticidal soaps, but have occasionally resorted to sevin.
Well, what I can tell you is that wherever they were found underneath the dahlia leaves, they were always right on top of the main veins in the center of the leaves, and right on the spots where I would see them, there would always be a bumpy swelling of the vein in that area. If they had been there for a while, the end of that leaf would usually die beyond the swollen, and now brownish vein area where the tree hopper had been seen. Also, they would attract ants, which would only be there is if honeydew is present, which only happens as a result of an insect feeding on parts of plants.
(Sorry - Just noticed this question)
My containers vary from 8-10" for small and dwarf varieties, 10-12 for the 3 1/2 - 4 ft dahlias and 14 inches for larger dahlias.
They all get fed and watered the same, whether in pots or in the ground. (I know they should supposedly be watered more because pots dry out faster but my soil is sand based and VERY porous and they drain exceptionally fast - so everyone usually gets water as needed).
The trick is trying to decide on water when the fog sets in and they get wet every night. I may actually water the potted ones LESS in those circumstances, since they retain the water better.
David
I was at a customers home about 3 weeks ago, and she had bought 2 little dahliettas with flower buds just about ready to open. I came back 2 days ago, and they hadnt opened yet, and were about the same size as before(the buds), but the problem was, they had almost all their leaves eaten off by slugs, since she wasnt watching them or applying slug bait.
My experience from last year is - yes the stems will get somewhat thicker. Pinching them back early helps. Obviously some types of Dahlias simply have much thicker stems, and it shows up right at the start, but even the thin spindly ones should thicken up and get sturdier.
This year on some of my really spindly ones, I have pinched them after the second true leaves, and then after the first laterals began growing I pinched those at the third set of leaves. Hoping to slow down the vertical growth and get bushier, sturdier plants. We will see how well that works.
I wish some of the really experience Dahlia growers were on this forum more, but many seem to have dropped off.
Yeah, it doesnt seem that too many people frequent this forum(dahlias). I have started threads that took a week or more to get just 1 response. I am a member of other forums where you can start a thread, and be almost guaranteed to get a response within minutes. Its common to get 10-15 responses per day, or more. But not here. I've seen simple thread questions go unanswered completely.
I don't know where you are but at this point if it happened to one of mine I would expect it to be up and blooming again nicely by the end of summer. I think you will likely have very nice tubers from this. IT may also kick it into tuber making as a survival method!
Thanks Kerianne,
I will do that. I reread a couple of the Dahlia sites re: topping and pinching back, but didnt find much about regular pinching - only the initial. I'll try your method on at least some of them and see how it goes.
Hope you get many gorgeous blooms for the wedding!
The 1st year I grew dahlias I didnt do any pinching because I didnt know you were supposed to, and the instructions that came on the box of tubers didnt say anything about it.
Every year since I have simply pinched them at the 3rd leaf level. Then I let them grow as many side laterals as they want to grow. Last year they grew anywhere between 3-6 laterals, which is the maximum they can grow in pinched to 3rd leaf level. Then I just installed upside down 42" standard tomato cages(round), after clipping off the protruding straight wires off the tops of the cages, and using them as stakes to stake down the large side of the cage to the ground.
But that wasnt enough, because I was getting about 6.5 hours of sun from May-July, but later once the sun started falling in the sky, I was down to 3-4 hours per day by late September, so my plants grew from 4.5' to almost 8 feet. They were sturdy though, and I just had to tie them to the top parts of the cages to keep them from falling over if they got too many flowers at once and got wet.
But we had 2 hurricanes blow through, and he first one in September dumped around 14 inches of rain with wind, but they didnt suffer hardly any damage. Then the 2nd hurricane came through later in the season in October, and it was much more windy(30-50mph) so some laterals broke, but only about 10%.
I didnt do any other pinching aside from the 3rd leaf level at the beginning.
I just moved to Denver. I thought with no rain my tubers would be up in no time. No way! In MA. where I came from, there were slugs, snails, rabbits, gophers, etc. to contend with. None of that here. Next year I will try plants for sure. They will have to be hardened off before I can plant them though. Corralto's is just plants. I use them sometimes.
No, in Denver you will just have to cope with drought, hail storms, drought, snow, drought and high winds! Never the less, I got a friend who lives there hooked on them last year :-) I think he grew them in pots
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