My write up on Dahlia Talk:
Dahlia Talk 11-26-24
by Ted J. Kennedy
There were 32 participants and about 4 people were first timers.
After some social chitchat we received an inquiry from our grower in Australia. He is having problems with earwigs especially the small ones. A couple of people said they use Sluggo Plus(or another brand Black Jack?) that has an insecticide in it that kills the earwigs. Steve in Australia said that is not available there. Another person asked Steve how big were the earwigs and Steve said “4 inches”. There was silence from the Zoom audience as they processed the possibility that they must have very nasty critters in Australia. In my feeble mind, my only thought was that a 4 inch earwig would not fit in my ear. Then Steve said: “Just kidding” and there was some noticeable relief from the audience. The insecticide in the Sluggo is Spinosad that is an organic product and is also sold separately here in the USA. I told the short story of how it was discovered in the Caribbean sugar refineries. He is having a problem with too much rain and he only plants from cuttings. He has extra cuttings and may have to replace several.
Another subject that got a lot of air time was the “”My dahlias grown from cuttings have very few tubers?” I immediately piped in that I recently saw a very logical post on Facebook that made sense to me. It said cuttings should be planted deeper and there needs to be at least one set of inter nodes under the soil in addition to the root ball. When I saw that, it was like turning on a light bulb in my brain. Quickly one of the old timers agreed and said he has been doing that for years(why didn't he tell me years ago?) and it really helps. Steve from Australia grows his cuttings to about a foot tall and buries two inter nodes. And then most of them said almost in unison that this all helps but that many still do not make good tubers. There was some discussion about day lengths when the cuttings are grown under lights but most agreed that many varieties are genetically not good tuber makers. Then we changed the subject to tuber makers.
We agreed that that there is no list being compiled of poor tuber makers. It was like everybody hoped that one of us would volunteer to be the “poor tuber czar “ and keep track of that issue spending 8 hours a day for five days a week. It did not happen.
We were shown a 12 minute video from Swan Island dahlias on how they harvest tuber clumps in the field. I will not talk much about it here except to say it is worth watching. After you see it you will go out and buy two large tractors and hire 10 people to help you with the harvest. In the video, it was obvious they were harvesting after a heavy frost as the plants were all brown. Heather said you should harvest after a frost.
After the video the moderator asked the 32 participants if they harvest only after a frost and if so to raise their hand. No one raised their hand. Dick Parshall stated that he begins digging on October 1st each year and finishes digging and dividing the week end before Thanksgiving. Most of the people in the Zoom meeting were done but several of us were not yet finished including my self and Teresa Bergman.
By the way Sarah Romanek, divided 20 tuber clumps during the two hour meeting and still had time to make a few cogent comments. She wins the prize for multi-tasking.
The conversation went to tuber yields. One after another said it was an excellent tuber year and one of the best ever. I noted that the first year seedlings had huge tuber clumps. Kay Kapps said she averaged 7 to 9 tubers per clump. Dick Parshall surmised that the excellent weather in September caused the extraordinary tuber growth. He stated that some were harvested about September 1st and had only some skinny tubers. The same plants at the end of September had huge clumps.
There was brief conversion about tuber rot and the curse of the purple dahlia( I will not explain, you should participate in the Zoom meetings). The subject changed briefly to the inability of people to capture the true purple of their dahlias in pictures. I volunteered some information that may explain why that is but I will not repeat it here. If you want to know my theory, email me. Having said that, my theory does not offer a solution.
This summary is very brief and the meeting had much, much more content. And it actually went on for an extra 10 minutes and several people started gabbing early before the meeting.
Note scheduling change: The next Zoom meeting Dahlia Talk will be on MONDAY. December 23rd. We may talk about the new 2025 introductions.
Picture is of mother and daughter.
