Annabeth, your flowers are gorgeous(and your girls are so cute)! I am new to dahlias, so have no likes or dislikes yet, just looking and learning :-)
I'm sure I will have many questions and observations next summer!
Thanks for the eye candy-it's such a cold and dreary day!
-B

Great dahlias and darling garden helpers, Annabeth. You remind me how much I liked Tempest for all the reasons you cited. I agree September Morn was sort of wan in color early on, but it kept right on blooming in a richer, beautiful rose/yellow well into November here, so I'm keeping it. Robinhood is always a favorite here.

My big woe is that we were hit by a prolonged cold snap and there are still 20 dahlias to be dug from the now-frozen tundra. There are piles of leaves over the roots, but I'm not sure what I'll find once I can break the soil with a shovel. There are many duplicates out there, but several I would like to save. Time will tell if they're salvageable or not.

Thank you Brandy and Poochella for your responses! I am rather new to dahlias too (2009 was only my 4th year growing them, before that, I hardly knew they existed). I am very thankful to have this forum and experts like Poochella giving their advice and insights. I especially love the posts with lots of photos. I hope others will add to this post (after the holidays I'm sure) or start their own. I like getting insider info on dahlias from sources other than vendors.

Merry Christmas to you guys and to all who are reading this! Annabeth

Have you checked if there are any CA Dahlia Societies near you, Annabeth? Lots of dahlia lovers there, and likely willing to share tons of experienced information for growing in your locale. I'm no expert, just taught from the school of hard knocks, or hard rocks, in the case of my soil ;)

Merry Christmas to you as well! I'm crossing fingers for all those faced with travel in the Rockies and Plains, bad timing for blizzards and ice.

Annabeth your girls are simply darling! What a wonderful photo. I, too, love Verda - I have always loved cactus forms they just are so pretty in the vase. Gorgeous - I can feel my old dahliah passion coming out in the open. Beautiful!

This is perfect- thanks for bumping the post up. Not only too revisit the beautiful kids and dahlias, but I got Lynn's April as a substitution in an order and wonder how tall it got for you.

Reordered Tempest for this year too and I'm glad I did.

Poochella, I'm sorry I didn't see your question on Lyn's April until just now. Yes it is a tall dahlia for me but not so tall that I can't stand it. I'd say 5 to 5 1/2 feet. That is just a guess. I could measure it but I'm sure by now you know what it'll do in your garden. I hope you like it. How is your Tempest doing?

Me, I feel like an utter failure in dahlias right now. I just got back from Swan Island's Dahlia Festival and while thrilled to see their beautiful dahlias, I came home to my white fly-ravaged plants and heat-hit blooms that are only about half the size of theirs (on the same varieties). I have to do some things better than I am. Right now, I feel like their is no hope but to start over next year because my plants look terrible right now. I also wonder if I've got some plants with Aster Yellows, based on some posts on this forum. I guess I'll throw them in the burn pile this winter.

I hope I can turn it around before the end of the season with some Insecticidal Soap spray and White Fly Paper traps.

Cindysunshine--thanks for the compliments. Your name makes me feel like Eeyore after writing the above. I wish I had a more sunny outlook about dahlias right now. I've still got a number of new varieties that haven't bloomed yet due to a late start in the spring. Maybe if I can make things look better in a week or two I might be rewarded with some new blooms. Thanks again and I hope you did rekindle your dahlia passion.

Annabeth

This will make you feel better Annabeth: it's been the worst year for dahlias in memory. Soggy, cold miserable May and June right up through 4th of July. There isn't a month yet we haven't had our furnace on at least once or twice while the rest of the country deep fried in 90's and 100's. At best, 30% of my plants have bloomed and the others slowly, slowly coming around to show color. Blooms that are usually 6" are 4", 3" are barely 2" etc. Weird year.

I keep hearing 'summer is over' and just shake my head hoping that isn't true. It hasn't started, as far as I can tell LOL! September is usually my best month for blooms- too many sometimes- but the spiders are already weaving their webs that typically don't show up til October, and there's that annoying chill in the air :(

The only thing to do is start planning for 2011, continue to fight your bugs and diseases and dream of better dahlias. Lyn's April has yet to bloom but to date is 4 ft tall, thanks for telling me the height though.

Poochella, I always, always look forward to reading your responses on every post. Thanks for the encouragement!

I know it has been a weird year but I also berate myself for getting a later start than I should have on planting and uncovering the dahlias that overwintered. I also know that I need to feed them more often than I do. I was jump-started back into action after see the Swan Island dahlias. I don't know if the insecticidal soap and the traps will help much but I at least feel like I'm doing something positive to help the dahlias.

By the way, do you know if some tiny green spots on petals might be White Fly eggs? I brought a Wyn's Farmer John into the house and I noticed the spots on about 1/8th of the petals. It was hard to do but I threw it away outside thinking it might be some little baby White Flys that I don't want on my houseplants. It was difficult to throw away the bloom though. Talk about Bee-Yu-Tee-Full. I put it in a silver mint julep cup that has that pretty patina on it that silver gets just before it really tarnishes. So it looked sort of gold-ish as well as silver. It made the bloom look very ritzy. Most of the time I think of dahlias as a beautiful but not necessarily elegant flower. This could have set on the table at a fine restaurant, except for those tiny green spots.

Anyway, thanks again for the encouragement Poochella. I am trying to get to our local Farmer's Market with my dahlias but I don't feel confident enough in the quality of my blooms or even their quantity right now. Even if I could only get there once this year, it would at least be a learning experience for next year. I wouldn't even need to make a profit this year--I just want to get over the hump of starting.
Good Luck to you and your dahlias!
Annabeth