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...

SteveM

HH Ambiance also has an excellent vase life, especially for the form. She is one of the few dahlias that is excellent for garden, show, and cut. She is also easy to grow and propagates easily from cuttings.

Justafewdahlias

BackyardBouquets_17
Gay princess, moonstruck, Mary Jo, Matilda Houston, China doll, amber queeen, Kelgi Ann. im in the pnw. Pics of Some of the early blooms of moonstruck, Kelgi Ann, & gay princess

Teddahlia

Grow seedlings in 4 inch buried pots?
Yes or no and why.

BackyardBouquets_17

Teddahlia
Not a super experienced seedling grower here but here’s my review on that. I did it one year with roughly 100 plants. I wasn’t real impressed.

Basically the only Pros for me were it was simple to yank out the culls.

Cons took a lot longer to plant for me vs just digging a small hole every 6-9 inches. With a pot u had to dig a trench ( for me by hand) deep enough for the pot.
My seedlings not grown in pots gave dividable tuber clumps. Anywhere from 2-5 tubers. The pot grown ones just gave a small tangled mess of a pot tuber.
Most times the pot busted anyway so u had to mess with that in the fall as well as I really struggled to get the keepers out of their pots then in the fall.

My conclusion: much simpler for me to plant in ground n yank out the culls. If they don’t yank out easily no big deal I have a six yr old whose more than happy to dig it up with his little shovel 😀 tag the keepers with flagging tape n only those with tags get dug. Just my two cents.

Teddahlia

The method was supposedly invented by Gordie Leroux of Kenora Dahlias. He had Parkinsons and could not dig tuber clumps and switched to the 4 inch pots.
One more big negative for us is that the pots are only used for one year and since you only keep 10% of your seedlings, 90% became trash and there was a huge pile of them to be disposed of . And occasionally you miss digging one and it becomes garden debris.
And one more negative: You fill them with expensive potting soil.

SteveM

Assuming sufficient water, fertilizer and staking, is it possible to get an accurate evaluation of seedlings grown in 4" pots above ground, e.g., on a greenhouse bench?

Justafewdahlias

SteveM I did sink pots and I also grew seedlings in pots that I didn’t sink. They were 5.9 wide by 5.3 tall. Not sure if it was a coincidence or not but I didn’t have any keepers from seedlings grown in this 5inch pot size/setup.

Seedlings I tried to grow in 4 inch pots almost had a failure to thrive, like they were just stalling. I thought about tossing them but as soon as I moved them into a raised garden bed they took off.

I did grow most seedlings in pots 6.5 inches wide and 7 inches tall and I felt that size above ground pot let me evaluate the plant. I tell myself if it grows well in that it & I want to keep it then it will only grow better with more space 😅

Teddahlia

Greenhouse plants need daily and sometimes many times daily attention. One can do miracles with liquid greenhouse fertilizer and 4 inch pots have enough soil to grow a dahlia to nearly 4 feet. So, with lots of effort and good weather it could be done. Meanwhile, I will continue growing mine in the garden.

Teddahlia

I am thinking about posting this to Facebook. What do you think?
Breeding dahlias has been compared to playing a slot machine. You pull the handle 100 times and the machine keeps you interested by giving you a small winner from time to time and it makes lots of noise and perhaps the screen explodes with animation making you believe you are a big winner. And if you are really lucky, you hit a jackpot, the one where you win “serious” money like $20.00 bucks. Oops, perhaps $20.00 is not really “serious” money but they want you to think so, as the machine sings pretty songs and the screen explodes in colorful bursts of color.

Breeding dahlia seedlings can be compared to a slot machine in that not every pull of the slot machine handle gives you winner. Your seedlings are generally “teasers” that have perhaps a nice trait or two like a pretty color but are deficient in several others. And every once in awhile you get that $20.00 winner, a flower that has “nice” form and “nice” color and is what we call a “keeper”.

But wait a second, when we cruised through the seedling garden to find our winner, there was no noise and no on screen explosions telling you that you had won a jackpot. So, how do you know that this seedling is a “winner”?

That is the point of this short story. If you have limited experience with the available dahlia varieties and you do not know the definitions of the various forms, you may not recognize a really nice flower and you may select a flower with faults. There are two obvious solutions: invite an experienced dahlia person over to help you evaluate your seedlings or take the time to become familiar with the characteristics of a good dahlia flower. Certainly doing both things is best. But I hear a faint voice in the audience that says, “I know a pretty one when I see it and I breed dahlias that I like and I do not care about show dahlias or even cut flowers.” Yes, there lots of people who do that. I bet if the famous artists Vincent van Gogh or Picasso were dahlia breeders, that their flowers would be spectacular in an unconventional way.

Bessie

Teddahlia I've been trying to convince my husband that what I do growing dahlias can be compared to fishing. More than a bit obsessive, I'm looking for the "big one" or "really nice one". There's commonality of time spent discarding ones that need to get "thrown back in" to the compost bin. Lots of time can be spent with no good results. Planning, research and commitment is needed for both. Being out in nature is also a shared positive side effect. He's not convinced with my analogy, however he hasn't come up with a good counter to my comparison.

SteveM

Teddahlia I am thinking about posting this to Facebook. What do you think?

Clever article and without the show-breeders-bias I see in some breeding articles.

MissyWeitzel

Good explanation, Ted. I haven't spent much time in the dahlia FB groups lately. I think it's great you give helpful advice and are still active in the group even since the membership exploded with "breeders" proud of their hot shit. I'm painfully aware of my early hot shit seedling posts and still really know nothing but yet don't have a sliver of the patience and kindness you and the Boleys and other very accomplished dahlia hybridizers have with the newbs. So I'll just keep on keeping to myself. 😅 Anyway, thanks for sharing your knowledge.

Teddahlia

"..but I saved a pot tuber." seedling 24-103 is alive! Pot tubers to the rescue.

Teddahlia

Inventoried the 2025 seedling tubers. We will select the ones that we will sprout to take cuttings. Most will be planted into the ground and the tubers look good.

calico20hill

Its that time of year again and I am starting the first tubers into pots in my greenhouse. For the first time since moving 6 years ago I took part in our local Columbia County Tuber sale. It was a lot of fun inspite of being held in a big open garage in very chilly weather! My goal wasn't so much to make a lot of money, but to get to know my local dahlia community, and I have to say it is a thriving one! I met a few new people, and sold some tubers and acquired a few special ones for myself. There were a lot more I would have bought if I actually had room to grow them. It was great fun for me because my daughter came and helped me with the money part and she got to meet my local friends and vice versa...we had a very campanionable table .

I'm going to donate the unsold tubers to the Portland Dahlia Society for their sale, because selling on my own is not fun...I'd rather be planting in my own garden...I just have to figure out how to get them to it...We don't go out to night meetings anymore...

Teddahlia

The 2026 "Ted likes", "Margaret Likes" and "Ted and Margaret likes " negotiations have ended and the 2025 selections that will get some cuttings taken have been selected and approved by both parties. About 40 were selected and we agreed that some should only have 2-3 cuttings, WHY? Growing seedlings in 4 inch pots means you do not have tubers to plant and even if you "just sort of like it" , you have to take some cuttings to see a few plants. The seedlings grown in the ground almost always have tubers to plant. I am glad we only planted about 35% of the seedlings in the 4 inch pots. Yes, the harvesting of the plants in 4 inch pots is easy-peazy but you are trading that for lots more work down the road.
Black white picture and instead of having you guess the color, it is just yellow. And some say, "it is too bad it is yellow," while I say we do not have a real yellow waterlily and we have to check that box.

Juliarugula

Teddahlia And some say, "it is too bad it is yellow,"

I like yellow. While it is not my most favorite dahlia color (orange), yellow is my favorite color in general.

So yay for a yellow Hollyhill waterlily!

calico20hill

Juliarugula I like soft sunshine yellows for my house bouquets. They are like bringing sunshine inside.They also tend to light up a bouquet of other colors. I don't think there is a single color that I "don't do". In a Autumn I would do orangy yellows with oranges and reds and colored leaves. Earlier in the season I would probably go for the softer lemony yellows.

BackyardBouquets_17

Yellow can be nice to have from a hybridizers stand point. I was sure I recalled reading or hearing somewhere that to increase your chance of getting the color you want to cross it with a yellow since yellow is a recessive gene. Just yesterday Listening to a podcast where Florelie from Australia said the same thing confirmed it that I wasn’t just making things up in my head.

Teddahlia

In dahlias using the words dominant or recessive are not accurate as they are not used in the same way as in diploid breeding. As Steve, said previously, perhaps you can use them to say that a trait is less common(recessive) or that the trait is very common(dominant).
The chemistry of yellow pigment is that it is a version of the white pigments and you see the yellow when the "red" pigments are not formed. Wayne Holland explained it by saying that if you have red flower and you see a "wolf petal" that is different color, you are seeing the color of the "white" pigment before it was changed to red. For that one petal the chemical transformation to red did not occur and you see original color. The "white " pigments can be more than just white or yellow and I believe there is one that is a very light orange.
So if you use yellow for the parent it can give you yellow flowers or red flowers but generally not lavender or purple flowers. And yes, white flowers too.
Purple flowers are another long winded subject.

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