3,226 Garden Web Discussions | Dahlias
The key to early blooming is to start the tubers in gallon pots well before the planting time-about 6 weeks. You will have to monitor them for killing frosts and many people move them in and out depending on the weather. One avid grower has them on his sunny deck during the day and if there is frost brings them into his garage. The plants should be about a foot high in the pots and when planted they will wilt for a day or two and then grow very rapidly. You will gain several weeks on the season, especially if you have fairly hot summers. Dahlias need to be about 18 inches to two feet tall when really hot weather in the summer hits them. They will continue to grow in the hot weather if they are bigger plants but if they are small plants will not grow during the hot weather. You should be able to get good blooms as soon at the weather cools off in late August.
Plant outside after frost. If top is intact leave it alone, maybe it will even bloom earlier this year because it started the season with a big top, instead of having to grow a whole new top from soil level.
Mine always waited until the last minute before frost to start blooming, effectively making it a waste of time except as a novelty offering mostly just foliage. I think this is a typical performance here (PNW), although perhaps flowering is enhanced by placement near a warm wall - I may have seen one or two local examples so situated that had managed to open at least several flowers per stalk, as opposed to like, one for the entire plant.
This post was edited by bboy on Thu, Jan 29, 15 at 14:50
Hello CC,
great to hear from you, thanks for your answer.
The attached pics are most helpful as they show young and open flowerheads ( which change as described...)
In thhe catalogues it's usually just a fully opened flower. So now I select some pics and let them choose.
By the way, I ordered from a grower in Latvia for the coming season, not a whole bunch, just some very simple waterlily types, and from the farmer who started with 500 cultivars last summer, he has some Swan island or American cultivars, some more water liliew as well. Glad I did so, I decided not to grow any cultivars that don't enthrall me, I just have so few, than each one should be excellent for me...
Completely off topic, my aunt died last night, not surprising as she had a weak heart and stuff. Another reminder that life is finite and you should enjoy it while you can. Not going on a spree or something,
find pleasure in little things, count your blessings...
Well, and look forward to some funny cultivar that has exactly the right kind of fire engine red that I like in some flowers.
Thanks, I hope you have a good start into the Dahlia season, bye, Lin
I had to look up DRagons Breath,
IMO not similar at all.
R World is rather purple/ dark red with white, the shape is more leaning towards semi-cactus.
And all flowers are slightly different as the redwhite-pattern is based on transposons, "jumping genes" that switch the red-information on or off by random.
Apart from that
it is one of my favorits, I grow cut flowers for myself (just about 20 Dahlias), tall plant, needs staking, long stems, flower heads firm on the stalks, starts early, flowers till late in the season,
for me healthy and carefree.
that pic shows the color quite exactly, perhaps you need to order that one as well...
Just leave it alone and only do something if it is going to freeze. I would describe "too much water" in the Winter more as "under water" like a flood. A pot may hold quite a bit of water but "under water" is what kills dahlias. About 24 hours "under water" generally causes them to die. Yes, it would be better to not water it, but it is not a "death sentence".
Okay I'll leave it be. I just never had this issue before and didn't know what to do as my hubby said he put the garden hose to it. It still had water running out of the pot as of last night; today it will be close to 70, so I'm sure it will be okay today. Thanks!
Hard to judge size with the subject coming toward the camera, but if it is 6-8 inches across it may be 'Babylon Purple' or, if smaller, something like 'Thomas Edison' or 'Sassy'. The thing is, cultural differences can affect the bloom size and color and there are a number of purplish-reds out there.
tj
Seed and plant catalogs full of pictures is an old marketing method that has been done for over a hundred years. They are sent out in the Winter when little gardening occurs and the recipient dreams of a nice garden. Websites have taken the place of many catalogs. However, when they said computers would cause fewer things to be printed, they were wrong. Computers enable the sellers to print more catalogs than ever and we have received at least 10 in the last several weeks. I believe that Swan Island is the last of the printed dahlia catalogs. If you enjoy collecting things, old dahlia catalogs are very interesting.
teddahlia: Hi,
My aim is not to get as many shoots (offspring) as possible, but to see if sprouts attached to a variable amount of tuber are more successful than on their own. I have a few pot-grown tubers that are quite congested, making division difficult, and I'm interested to see if I can cut off the tops of the sprouted tubers and root them. I've read that some folk will cut off the bottom of a tuber so that it will fit into a pot for growing on. So it's a case of how much part-tuber (or how little) a sprout needs to carry on growing with a minimum of failures.
What is "on their own" ? Crowded, contorted, tuber clumps can easily be divided and as long as there is an eye, will grow. Tubers can be cut in half or even more and will grow just fine. When I divide tuber clumps that have small tubers, I leave lots of the stalk with the tubers so that they will have more tuber mass to draw from. I have trimmed many tubers and tuber clumps to fit into pots and it is my belief that as long as you have about as much material as a small chicken egg, they do fine. Rooting cuttings makes more sense to me as you are multiplying the number of plants from the tuber material. It is easy to get over 10 cuttings from a small tuber clump. You apparently are just ripping off some of the sprouts with a small amount of tuber material. That is really no different than rooting a cutting and I have done that accidentally many times and the plant material takes the same amount of time to root as the other cuttings I take. But there is no more eye to send up more cuttings.
i am english but now live in australia my husband grows dalihas and takes new cuttings every year as the tubers swell for the new season he cuts the shoot off at tuber level and pots them up until good size and growing well then repots until ready to plant
i am english but now live in australia my husband grows dalihas and takes new cuttings every year as the tubers swell for the new season he cuts the shoot off at tuber level and pots them up until good size and growing well then repots until ready to plant
I have an uncle who moved to Mexico, and when I send letters to him, they go to a Texas address. He subscribes to a service that then forwards his US mail to him in batches. It takes about three weeks for a letter to get to him.
I doubt that customs is too worried about out-going plant material into Mexico, so that might be an avenue that you could research. I would worry that tubers might get fried in the heat, though. That is a long time for them to be bagged up with no ventilation and protection. Seeds might be a better choice for you, but the beautiful named cultivars only come from tubers.
Mike, there is a Asociacion Mexicana de la Dalia o Acocoxochitl, and they have a "Dahlia Network" called Red de Dahlias. I don't know where this Mexican Dahlia Society is located, but if you can connect up with them, they might have information on how to obtain varieties already grown in Mexico, and any special cultivation issues for growing dahlias in that climate.