Hybridizing Dahlias

Bessie · 2023-09-14T03:43:02+00:00

Krista to discover if seeds are growing in the seed pod, after there are no remaining anthers on the pod, gently squeeze the pods between your thumb and fing...

Teddahlia

Lost and found: while pulling tubers to sprout for cuttings, this favorite of Margaret was in the very last box. Have placed three tubers in pots to sprout. It will be an excellent cut flower and should do well in shows too.

Justafewdahlias

Hello! I am curious if anyone has any sources for finding seeds of specific dahlias or specific forms of dahlias for sale? The dahlia seeds online are typically “bees choice” and “lots of open center blooms” which I have never sought out to grow. I really love poms, ball, and formal decorative dahlias. In the future I will try to save seeds of my dahlias. I never have saved any seeds before since I only found out about growing dahlias from seeds recently. I think growing some “surprise” flowers will be so much fun!

I don’t have any open center dahlias in my garden so should future seeds collected from my flowers be most likely free of open centered blooms?

Thanks!

Justafewdahlias

I don’t have any open center dahlias in my garden so should future seeds collected from my flowers be most likely free of open centered blooms?

Thanks!

Edit: found some finally ! No clue where these seeds were when I was searching for them a couple months ago. https://southernseeds.com/products/dahlia-dahlia-variablilis-25-seeds

SteveM

2023 seedling - not a show or cut variety but has potential as a garden variety. Short, stocky plants bear 5" blooms on short stems, above leaf canopy.

Bessie

SteveM 🎉 I've been waiting patiently to see some of your creations.😃
If you recommend it, then it must be good.

Justafewdahlias

SteveM I am a big fan of the “short” garden dahlias. I ordered some for my front yard this year that hopefully won’t require staking. I was just thinking “I wonder if hybridizes ever aim to make shorter plants?” It feels like there are a lot less options out there when you’re searching for shorter varieties.

Teddahlia

"I don’t have any open center dahlias in my garden so should future seeds collected from my flowers be most likely free of open centered blooms? "My observation has been about 30% of seedlings from fully double dahlias have open centers.

Justafewdahlias

Teddahlia thank you for this insight! I always assumed it was just the open center dahlia’s pollen causing this. This helps me realize it’s the plant’s past genetic background also. I can’t blame it all on the pollen

Teddahlia

I am a bit pessimistic when I discuss this issue: As breeders, we breed seeds for our own use and never sell seeds. Dahlias have on average terrible seedlings even when grown from the very best seeds. Good seeds produce about 10% seedlings that are tolerably good; 1% are actually good. That means you need to plant 1,000- seedlings to get 10 that are "good" . And that was from the best seeds and no way will anybody ever sell you their "best" seeds. I would say the odds of getting a really nice dahlia from the seeds typically sold is about 1 in a thousand. If you carefully pick out 4-5 seed making varieties that have similar form and grow them apart from your other dahlias and keep the seeds, I bet you could get 2 nice seedling out of 1,000-. Dahlias grown from tubers of named varieties have nearly a 100% success rate.

Justafewdahlias

Teddahlia

This completely makes sense when seeing this from the point of view as someone who grows or breeds dahlias. My expectations are not super high for what my store bought seeds will turn into. I’m guessing the seeds collected and sold are from plants or growers not at all involved in any dahlia breeding. It’s the surprise factor that is fun for me (and my 3 year old). Kinda like playing the gardening lotto, one in a million chance but at least with growing dahlia seeds I get some (terrible) flowers in the end! I am not at all a serious dahlia grower😅. However, this year I have been learning more about growing dahlias. A lot of new information gained for me to try to put to use this season!

Can we see photos of your terrible seedlings? Now I am curious what a terrible one is like 😂Terrible in appearance? Or terrible in growth, vigor, some other factor?

SteveM

Bessie Thanks, I only grew 60 seedlings last year and ended up saving 5 as potential cut varieties and one as a potential garden variety.

How many seedlings did you end up with this year? You also have some second year grow outs? I'm looking forward to seeing your2024 seedlings. Did you plant them out yet?

Bessie

SteveM
Seedlings this year: No final count, but numbers here are approximate. 28 Cafe au Lait seedlings, 30 Hollyhill Daydream seedlings, 13 Bahama Mama seedlings, 50 Miscellaneous parents seedlings, 13 Ferncliff Copper seedlings, 50 seedlings from 23029 seedling.
So approximately 180 seedlings for 2024.
Seedlings are all on my patio, weathering the multiple rain storm systems that have come through. Today they got two foliar applications of Miracle Grow, fortified with Epsom salts for Magnesium. I need to treat for fungus gnats ASAP. It's been 2 weeks since the last treatment.
Planting: Been busy cleaning up the yard, but I think next week has potential for planting 2024 seedlings out. I think I have a plan for planting them, but I keep changing my mind. To plant them in the ground in their current pots, or brave the gophers and plant directly in the ground. Then, there's always the plastic baskets I used last year. The one Dahlia the gopher ate through the plastic to get at the tubers(seedling 23043), has sprouted nicely, from a small tuber attached to the partially eaten bigger tuber.
About half of the 2024 seedlings are very robust and are nice plants. The other half are smaller plants that have grown very slowly. I suspect the smaller seedlings will be shorter growing plants.

blown_dry

Justafewdahlias Probably many enthusiasts grow in larger areas where a short dahlia would get lost, and one of the largest groups of dahlia growers are cut flower farmers who need long stems. If you search for "bedding dahlia" online you may find many candidates.

SteveM

Justafewdahlias “I wonder if hybridizes ever aim to make shorter plants?” It feels like there are a lot less options out there when you’re searching for shorter varieties.

Most of the breeding for short dahlias has been done by large commercial growers and are often patented. Many of these "bedding' types can be found at the "big box" stores. Verwer has developed the "Melody" line for this purpose. There is demand for short dahlias in landscaping and maybe this will be the next fad. There are a few breeders who are recognizing this niche and starting to save seedlings that have "garden dahlia" potential.

Teddahlia

"I suspect the smaller seedlings will be shorter growing plants." Some will be short plants but most are just not very vigorous. Like your list of seedlings except for Cafe au Lait. We grew some seedlings from Ferncliff Copper in about the year 1996 and cannot remember much about them. Bahama Mama is a typical Swan Island variety and the seedlings will be diverse. We may plant some seeds tomorrow.

Bessie

Teddahlia thanks for the insight regarding slower growing seedlings likely to not be robust.
I couldn't resist trying Cafe au Lait seedlings. I love experimentation, and brought lots of different types of pollen to the flowers.
This year I may focus on designated pollination crosses, just to focus seed production.

Justafewdahlias

I hear “like with like” (for form) has better outcomes for achieving pollination and producing seeds when breeding dahlias.

I think I have a big enough yard where I could separate my different dahlia from varieties by seclusion. I could put one type in front yard and another type in the back yard, side yard, etc. However, I have a new huge raised garden bed and it feels like a “waste” of some of my prime garden real estate to not put more dahlias in that raised bed. I could do 2 rows one of MB/ball dahlia and one of poms in this raised bed.

So my question is would having poms and MB/ball dahlias in the same raised bed jeopardize my chances of getting this years dahlias to pollinate each other via open pollination or make seeds? I remember watching an ADS presentation on hybridizing and how two water Lilly dahlias next to each other made no seeds (they just didn’t like each other) that presentation also said how a stellar was crossed with a FD dahlia to make a seedling that was kept. I know just about “anything is possible” with dahlias but just looking for insight if anyone has either intentionally or accidentally had ball and poms cross and make viable seeds. I am not caring about making show quality dahlias or needing them to fit into a specific type of form category. I just want seeds from my own dahlia varieties to grow next year. Thank you!

Teddahlia

Breeders identify varieties that make seeds and in our experience there are a lot more varieties that do not make seeds than those that do. If you are serious, you need to know whether a variety makes seeds. And it goes even further, as there are varieties that do not make seeds and make very little pollen. Remember all our discussion on how poms are impossible to breed, They are extremely poor seed makers and make almost no pollen either and they are really, really hard to hand cross. So will the MBs and poms create pollen problems? Not very many will receive the pom or MB pollen as they have very little pollen to donate. Are there two known seed varieties that never make seeds when crossed but make seeds when crossed other varieties? Margaret keeps track of those things and the answer is emphatically yes and the time spent on "duds" is something to be avoided. That is an argument for using "isolation beds" instead of hand crossing. Mike Iler hand crossed and found out how much time it took and went to isolation beds and relied on several known seed makers and numerous pollen only producers and was very successful. The Boleys are also isolation bed breeders and we do a version of that too. You lose the exact identity of the pollen parent when you use isolation beds and that information is important to us as you need to know both parents if you want to re-create that cross. In hand crossing, you know both parents and Margaret often repeats crosses and then uses those seedlings for some more crosses.

Justafewdahlias

Teddahlia
Thank you for your response, I am very new to all of this (and this forum) so I haven’t heard how impossible Poms were to breed!! Whoops! Sounds like a Tetris puzzle to work against to get a success with Poms. They are just some of my favorites so what I happen to be growing. Luckily I have a couple varieties that have been known to make seeds. I assumed making seeds would be the norm so I didn’t consider that when choosing plants, but something I will look into more for next year! At least I will have realistic expectations when trying to collect seeds this year from that group 😅 And at least I will have no reservation using the raised bed with them all together. I have other forms as well FD, WL, and SC

I mainly just want to have the fun of seeing a future seedling growing and see the end result to say “ oh wow the seedling from sun kissed turned out pink” (or insert other random observation). My goal is to have fun watching the cause and effect happen first hand, and to be entertained by that. Which I realize sounds very silly to most people who participate in dahlia hybridizing.

I would imagine note taking or some excel spreadsheet is a huge part of it all and very helpful to reference back to. Along with finding a meaningful way to organize all the notes. That alone is a huge project. I do take brief notes now with all my flower seeds since I don’t trust myself to remember any time lines or what worked best for seed germination, propagation, growth habits, etc. I think that some of the fun also is the gamble aspect of it, experimenting, trial and error, hopefully a success. That part is true for all gardening for me. The anticipation. I read that people get as much joy anticipating a trip or upcoming vacation vs actually being on said trip. The anticipation is a huge part of the overall happiness related to these type of things for many.

Teddahlia

"I would imagine note taking or some excel spreadsheet is a huge part of it all and very helpful to reference back to." We saved our first seeds in 1992 and Excel was new and super expensive. In 1996 we started a seedling spreadsheet and used a clone of Excel. At work in those days we used Lotus123. My clone was updated several times and has an "Excel" mode where all the commands are the same. Then my clone was no longer supported and I got a different clone called Libre Office. Yes, you need spreadsheet to keep track of things.

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