Well, one of the ones that has been flowering for about a week now is 'Crazy Legs'. It started out well and they were very bright and pretty.

So I cut the first 3 flowers and put them into a vase, and they got many compliments(as did my Macallster's pride dahlias which are also very pretty). Once they began wilting after 3 days or so I threw them out, but the 3rd one I picked started doing something strange while sitting in the vase. Like most dahlias, there are unopened petals at the center of the flower, but suddenly these petals all tried to start opening. This would be OK if they were flat petals, but since they are rolled, like a semi cactus, there isnt room for more petals to open. So when they open up, they crush and unroll the previously opened petals, and the new petals become all twisted, folded and sloppy looking.

So I threw out that flower, but the next day, I noticed that the 2 new flowers still on the plant were doing the exact same thing with the center petals all trying to open, and becoming all crushed, twisted and messy. Now they are all doing it! So now they dont look good enough to put into a vase and show them off!

Whats up with this? I just found another picture on Dave's Garden where someone else's flowers are doing the same thing....... But in most other pics, they are not.

Will they grow out of this?

The only thing I've done that may have something to do with this(but I doubt it) is that the soil around all my tomatoes and dahlias was seriously deficient in Nitrogen, and I didnt immediately add any because Swan Island repeatedly stated not to add too much N, so I didnt. I didnt even add any fertilizer when planting or after, because I'd used 25% aged cow manure, and I thought that would be enough, but it wasnt, so 2 weeks ago, I added a 'moderate' amount of water soluble 24-8-16 to the soil, which greened them up finally, as they'd been very light green, bordering on yellow. One dahlia in a pot of the same soil was yellow.

There is big difference between no nitrogen and too much nitrogen. A little bit of fertilizer every few weeks makes a huge difference. Cow manure from the bags at the store have almost no fertilizer in them. It is getting late in the year to fertilize but in your case, you need to give the dahlias some fertilizer to grow and the fertilizer needs to be balanced; that is it must have some nitrogen.