Hey those look great. Good healthy looking plants. Keep up the good enjoyment. Steve in Baltimore County.

Wonderful, such beautiful, clean leaves. Very good for a first timer.You must be doing something right.

What a beautiful specimen. Congratulations! I hope you have that monster staked so you don't lose it in wind or rain. My first dahlias were sprawled all over the planting bed. Thought they were the most ungainly plants ever :)

Thanks everyone. I was just looking at them more closely this morning and one of the blooms has brown spots on it. Then on the rest of the plants have little black droppings. Any suggestions? I do have them staked because the "stalks" are huge!

Not sure on the brown spots. Are the blooms with brown spots getting old, perhaps? Black spots are almost always bug droppings of some sort, but I didn't see any obvious chew marks on your lovely blooms. Nice job.

Uh, the blooms are probably only 2 weeks old if that. They are getting ready to bloom more! I had a bad problem with slugs at the beginning. There are some small ants crawling around on the whole plants and some little tiny flying bug. Not much leaf damage. Thanks.

2 weeks is getting pretty old for a bloom, so that may account for the brown spots. Sometimes rain will spot petals too.

If you see ants on your dahlias, you might want to check along the stems for aphids. Easily washed away with a squirt of water, or even removed by hand squeegying.

Wow, this is my first year with Dahlias, and they're no where near the size of yours. Very nice!