General Dahlia Chat 2024

Krista · 2024-01-05T01:50:48+00:00

When do we grow up and stop ordering more tubers than we can possibly fit into the space we have, for the next season? Is that something I can look forward t...

Clover

Teddahlia

Red Pig Tools makes one of my favorite weeding tools. I have their Cape Cod weeder and it sees a lot of use.

Justafewdahlias

Are there certain forms of dahlias that are known close at night? Or is it just random? I’m guessing it would only be in blooms that don’t have a ton of petals

Teddahlia

Many waterlilies close at night. We have one(so far a private flower)that is mostly closed during the day and closes more at night. It is very tall too. The Boleys have one that they have named and they showed it in the novelty class but the judges did not agree that it was novelty. It is to me.

Justafewdahlias

Teddahlia are there any photos of this novelty class dahlia? I watched a video about what is or isn’t a novelty dahlia. I want to say it was a speaker who hybridized dahlias giving a presentation to an ADS club chapter. After this video I am much more curious about novelty dahlias and the debate about what is or isn’t one

Juliarugula

I think I must be the only person in the world that isn’t a fan of the “petals closing at night” thing. I suppose it’s charming on an individual flower, but it’s soooo annoying to use those flowers in an arrangement. At night, your arrangements suddenly has a bunch of big gaps all over the place.

Justafewdahlias

Juliarugula I hadn’t thought of that downside, but veryyyy good point! 😂 I always notice when I am out in my yard in the evening and think “awww how sweet the flowers are going to bed”…I tend to do all one variety when I bring flowers inside in a vase (mostly cuz I have no design skills or not a lot of things blooming at the same time) so I never thought about the gaps problem till you mentioned this

Teddahlia

It would be nice if someone would list those that do not close at night. Or, it may be matter of degree too.

MissyWeitzel

I filled my first 2 florist orders of the season this week and made my first ever bridal bouquet for a neighbor! I simultaneously never want to do anyone's wedding flowers and also really want to do someone's wedding flowers. 😅

Lakeview Lucky

Juliarugula

MissyWeitzel I’d love to see photos of your bouquet! (Maybe you already posted on Facebook - I’ve been a little Facebook “light” these days…). I’ve never had any desire to do a wedding, but I always thought bridal bouquets look like a lot of fun!

Teddahlia

Wedding flowers are very nerve racking for the grower. Margaret did several weddings and I remember she had about 10 large vases and attempted (she succeeded)to put the same flowers in each one. She quit doing weddings soon after. You have to charge double as the time it takes to do their "special colors" and other requests adds up. And then they send a really small car to pick them up and have no containers.

calico20hill

And then there was the bride's mother who decided to set the back yard tables in the morning to get that task done. It was one of our very hot days and she set the flowers out early in the morning. I had frantic bridesmaids looking at my farm booth at the Farmer's Market for replacement flowers about 11 AM.....They were NOT happy with the bride's mother!

MissyWeitzel

Juliarugula
I learned how to do a spiral hand tied bouquet from watching YouTube videos and happened to have all sorts of fun things like poppy pods and cress and lisianthus and yarrow plus a couple white dahlias ready. I found videos that were really helpful with the way they're filmed. If you want to watch, go on YouTube and search, 'Bourbon and Bouquets spiral hand-tied bouquets' and watch part 1 and part 2. I watched them twice, practiced twice, and I think I'll be doing more of my arrangements this way too - the way the flowers all come together is really nice. It's just in a jar here, but I tied a natural twine ribbon around it too. Definitely things I'd change but I'm proud of my first one!

edewitt

I thought a couple of my tubers had multiple sprouts on the tuber and everything seemed normal. I looked closer today to see that some of those stalks are nwo forming little yellow blooms on the stems under the strange leaves. I freaked out for a couple of seconds until I realized what probably happened. Turns out the soil my girlfriend gave me probably had little seed potatoes in it from an old raised bed. You can see the left half is the doomed potato plant and the smaller right portion is the actual dahlia plant.

I'm mostly posting this to remind myself not to freak out in the future.

Juliarugula

MissyWeitzel yesterday I was asked to do a wedding for the first time. …. I declined …. I think I’d spend the whole month leading up to it worrying about it. It was hard to say no though. 😬

Krista

MissyWeitzel Your bouquet is beautiful! Thank you for sharing your resource; 'Bourbon and Bouquets spiral hand-tied bouquets' parts 1 and 2, on YouTube. I watched them and learned a lot! I want to try to build my skillset in building bouquets and begin to experiment with floral arrangements this summer and these videos were great!

Juliarugula

So pretty! I love the cosmos buds with the wavy stems!

Teddahlia

Are there any photos of this novelty class dahlia? I did a presentation on novelty dahlias at Federation meeting of about 100 people. It went over like a lead balloon. The problem is that there is no agreement as to what is a novelty dahlia. One set of people says all novelties are just poor examples of the other forms of dahlias. They never budge from this stance and want the novelty class eliminated. I do not exaggerate when I say that there are very many of these naysayer judges. I truly believe that novelties are real items and most people do not mind having the novelty class. I have never seen someone bring a novelty dahlia triple entry for bench competition. The odds are that one of the three judges would be one of those "there are no novelty dahlias" people and not pass the entry.

BackyardBouquets_17

As my seedlings bloom I have been culling the ones I don’t plan to keep ( mostly singles) and planting them in a row along the edge of our property since my son loves them so much . Roughly 100 feet from the dahlias I plan to save seed from. Will I need to cut these back once I start seed saving or is that far enough away it won’t have an impact on my seed saving?

MissyWeitzel

BackyardBouquets_17 you could mark the dahlias in your "regular" beds that are nearing maturity and you hope to save seeds from, then cut back all the open center plants so there's no pollen available there. Let the ones you want to save seed from [hopefully] get pollinated and form seed heads before letting the open center ones bloom again. I've done that before. I may actually do that again this year even though I now grow all open center dahlias a fair distance away, just to ensure that pollen doesn't reach my main patch.

Teddahlia

Bees think 100 feet is just a few inches. The pollen would pollute your seed parents. Remember the open center flowers have many times as much pollen also. Fully double dahlias have small pollen centers as that helps with the open center issue but means there is much less pollen for the bees to find. And bees are lazy and if they have to crawl around inside the flower to get pollen, they will just find a better flower.

BackyardBouquets_17

MissyWeitzel yup this is what I plan to do. Since we have bees I knew their flight pattern radius can go up to 2 miles away. Just wasn’t sure how they work with dahlias as I prefer not to pollute the pollen with singles if I can help it. Once it’s time to cut them back ill hand him the scissors and he will be more than happy to have free reign on cutting something!

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