2023 - Dahlia Blooms

edewitt · 2023-06-17T14:24:58+00:00

It's a bit early but at some point everyone's going to need a place to share their glorious dahlia photos. I've got a bloom from one of the cuttings I took...

Teddahlia

Seedling picture and name is probably a hoax as my wife Margaret would never "approve" it. Yellow flowers are currently considered to be the bottom of the barrel and where else would you find hot mustard? It does have some nice traits and I will first see if subsequent flowers are as nice as this one. Will it have a future?

Juliarugula

Teddahlia I really like that shade of yellow.

NCDahlia

Teddahlia I would grow it. Nice color.

As for a funky name no one would ever think of Hollyhill Takuan, is about the same shade of yellow. Japanese for pickled daikon radish. My grandma was Japanese only reason I know lol

SteveM

Juliarugula it was purchased as a travel companion for other tubers

that's hilarious! 😄

Teddahlia

daikon radish is included in the cover crop seeds. It is a very easy plant to grow.

Bessie

Bessie Mistaken identity.... The tag was buried under mulch. Hollyhill Daydream is the beautiful pink waterlily, that in a previous post I incorrectly identified as Wildwood Marie.

MissyWeitzel

Kelsey Neahkahnie - I mean, how cute is that?!

Coseytown Kay is proving to be an amazing cut flower! I double checked dates and I cut these 6 days ago and had them out of water right away for photos. I then put them in a vase with a little flower food and never changed the water and somehow they're fluffier and better today! Zero signs of the center opening or wrinkling on the backs of the petals. Fantastic!

drewtheflorist

Teddahlia

Kelsey Neahkahnie has collar petals that are dark pink Dr. Hammett was the first breeder to breed darker collar petals. It took him about 5 years and growing very many loser plants. Colin Walker has been breeding for the trait and this one looks to be one of his best. My Reginald Keene that I got from Halls of Heddon is a great disappointment to me as it has no vigor. I wanted to use it for breeding but hesitate to add poor genes to our seedlings. Kenora varieties have some of it's genes. Netherton Cindy is the white sport of Windhaven Blush and again I wanted to use it for breeding but it do not do well here and even more relevant, never made any seeds for me. I culled it this year. Fiona is the ball bred by the late Mike Iler and I grew it for several years trying to get seeds. Total failure but I still have his ball called Catalina and it is a better ball dahlia but again no seeds. Nice pictures.

Juliarugula

New favorite today! I almost didn’t try Hollyhill Finlandia a second time this year because last year it never bloomed. So glad I gave it a second chance - it’s stunning!

Juliarugula

A few more…

Hollyhill Sweet 16 - very pure pink waterlily. The name seems particularly perfect.

Verrone’s DF - lovely.

Clearview Cinnabar again.

Camano Pet - not wowed by this one so far. Maybe I’ll like it more as it opens fully.

I thought this HH Wicked Witch bloom was really interesting. It’s doing the half-and-half thing, but I think it’s with the purity of the background color? It’s like half is pure yellow and the other half is yellow smudged with red? I still haven’t decided if that’s the best way to describe what’s going on there. Anyway, cool!

Krista

Juliarugula I love your HHWW bloom, so cool! And side note, I lost my Camano Pet this year so I’m feeling a little relieved that it isn’t your absolute favorite. Here are a few of my overflow blooms. It feels so good to have enough plants to have full-time patio-bouquets too! I’ll have to learn how to build a bouquet one day, but these beautiful blooms sure are forgiving of my lack of skill.

The coveted Fawn has a funny oval, monster-mouth for a center in my garden!

Teddahlia

My Finlandia plants are growing slowly. It has been a personal favorite. Wicked Witch can have many versions and is a fun flower to grow. HH Sweet 16 is extremely easy to grow, making lots of smallish waterlily flowers and it makes nice tubers too. It biggest problem for us is that it does not make many seeds. Margaret used pollen to get some seedlings.

Juliarugula

Teddahlia I’m trying to keep in mind for next year…. This Hollyhill Finlandia was a cutting. I took a cutting specifically because I was hoping to get flowers earlier (at all!) this year. The cutting-grown plant has been a much more robust grower than the tuber grown plant, as well.

NCDahlia

Love seeing all the blooms from everyone this year. Really pretty and makes me miss having fully grown dahlias. Hopefully next year I will have fixed the vole / mole problem but should have pot tubers on 150 of my favorites so not all is lost yet....

Teddahlia

Pot tubers are good way of saving stock from garden disasters. However, they are not 100% by any means. Kevin Larkin (and Karen Zydner who did lots of the work too) operated Corralitos garden and he said that varieties that tended to rot in storage can be preserved as pot tubers but he always lost a percentage of them depending on how bad they rot. The worst I believe was 50% with about 25% being the norm for "rotters". There are also normal losses in pot tubers and perhaps as many of 10% of them may not do well in typical year. So, for rotting varieties you need several pot tubers . For really important varieties three is good and five is better. For the average , easily replaced variety one or two is fine. They take up so little space, having extras is very easy to do.

Teddahlia

The dahlias have been blooming later than usual and I have not been picking bouquets for the kitchen table. I went ahead and picked these and they are on the table. The yellow flower is very, very yellow without being golden yellow and the orange is a nice size for a bouquet. The black one is a nice size too at about 3.75 inches in diameter. The variegated one is an enthusiastic grower and last but not least the purple waterlily is in the middle showing off it's cupped florets.

Krista

Teddahlia Wow! I can’t choose which I love more between all of these very different flowers, exquisite!

Juliarugula

Krista is Fawn the fluffy one at the bottom?

What is the salmon-y colored WL?

Is the purple Sandia Bertha? My Sandia Bertha is such a gorgeous bloom, but seems to consistently be on the small side. I’m wondering if it’s a smaller sized WL bloom normally, or if it’s something about the location/nutrition/etc of my plant.

KitCMC

Krista this is SO breathtakingly beautiful and filling my rabbit-topped-dahlia-patch soul!! Nice job!

Krista

Juliarugula Yes for fawn, this is the first bloom on the plant and it had a very short stem.

The salmon-y colored WL is Hollyhill Daydream.

Yes for Sandia Bertha, it’s averaging 5” blooms in my garden. Shallower and slightly smaller than HH Daydream which is averaging 6”.

Juliarugula

Krista wow! Your HH Daydream is so much subtler than mine - mine is very bright! (Not the best photo, but it captures the color well).

I wonder if it will mellow as the season wears on.

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