Pinch the tips & then when you plant, take off a couple of sets of leaves & plant them in deeper like you would a tomato plant.
Ellie

Hi
I am not really a dahlia person but legginess is not decided by how tall a plant is but the spaciong between the sets of leaves. If you can look at it and it's stretching and displeasing to the eye I would say it's leggy.
Cherry

I have never had such tall ones before planting out. They are growing in the same sunny window where I normally start them, so something in the new varieties (those 2 kinds that are doing this) may be an issue. And yes, the space between the leaves is way too much. Instead of just nipping the growing tips IÂm thinking maybe I should actually cut off the top foot. They have already flopped over and are now curving up from the new angle: not attractive. I often have established ones in the garden do that, but it will be very hard to plant them out like this.

Have you considered staking them?

Cheers,
Russ

Funny I just brought in some stakes to do just that! Just have never staked anything before it was planted out in the garden, much less a month before it was due to go out there. ItÂs going to be really hard to plant a potted tuber with a 3 foot tall stalk. (Heck, in another month, at this rate they will be 4 feet tall.)

Honestly, IÂm tempted to just chop off the really tall ones and make them start over. Or cut them back to a foot.

IÂm looking at the bottom leaf pairs, though, and am wondering. The actual leaves are broken off so I canÂt tell if they were "true" leaves. They must have been damaged in the bag while the shoot was forming. Does it matter for dahlias? Are the lowest leaves true leaves?

I don't think it matters whether they were true leaves or not. You wouldn't want the stalk to be without leaves so you won't be snipping back to there anyway...right?

Cheers,
Russ

Ummm, some yes, some no? If I chop to a foot high on some that would leave like 2 pairs of axils for new leaves to emerge. I assumed that new leaves would come out pretty fast. No?