General Dahlia Chat 2024

Also, I should add - I just use a regular Google Sheets spreadsheet that I made myself. It doesn’t look pretty or anything, but I can cram it with tons of notes and info however I want. .

Bessie indeed! I have engaged her to help me with my website design. She’s really a lovely, generous woman and wildly creative. let us know what you decide!!

MissyWeitzel thank you for sharing this!

magucci

I keep looking at this but haven’t jumped yet. If you take her workshop do you get access to the database she created or do you still need to create/set your own up with smart suite

BackyardBouquets_17 You still have to set it up for your varieties. Essentially, there is a dahlia catalog. You enter in all of the varieties, their information (you decide what you want to track), and photos. Then, there is another separate area where you set up your "Field Plan", or what you plan to plant out for the next year. You can track it by groups of plants or by individual plant. Each one gets an individual item number that you associate back to the catalog. It's not that bad because you can import a spreadsheet (she shows you how to format it) instead of having to work individually through the database. It does take a bit of time to set up, but it's not bad at all.

Apologies if this has already been discussed in a previous post.

I purchased a Pom from NCascade last night named Lilac Willo. When I looked on the ADS website for classification info, they have a variety listed with the name Lilac Willo AND Willo Lilac (both lavender poms). There are a number of varieties with Willo as the second name, and an additional group with Willo as the first name. Does anyone have additional information? Is this a case of honoring blank Willo parent variety by naming its progeny Willo blank? Are they really just the same variety? I don’t see any others with the exact same words in the name. It seems like the Willo poms are all credited to N. Williams in Australia.

KitCMC Interesting question. At first glance, that are as many [blank] Willo varieties as there are Willo [blank] varieties. I will look into it more.

KitCMC
In my ADS 1976-2022 composite listing of dahlias both are listed and with the same hybridizer - N. Williams from Australia.

MissyWeitzel Great resource! My theory at this point is that they are the same variety and Lilac Willo is the proper spelling.
I looked at the 'dahlia world' directory and all 'willo' varieites are attributed to Williams of Aus. Variety names that lead with 'Willo' are spelled Willo's, interestingly.

Pop Willo is his too and he obviously did not always have Willo as the first word of the name. Last year, I talked to an Australian who knew a lot about him but we discussed breeding poms, not naming them.

MIDahlias Live on the edge, bro!!

Teddahlia I know you’ve talked about the difficulty of breeding poms — it seems like his efforts were unusually prolific.

MIDahlias let us know what happens this spring!

MIDahlias
Zero cringing from me! Some really great garden experiments and discoveries I have found out from being too tired to do something the “ideal” way or just from me forgetting or not wanting to do some task. Lots of experiments also have happened due to gardening with my young child “helping” me

My son really wanted to replant some on the tubers immediately after I divided a clump….and I let him because the time he spent digging some holes to plant the tubers bought me a whole lot of uninterrupted time to get stuff done in the yard.

There were a few plants where I dug, divided off a few tuber chunks then immediately replanted them. I have a lot of gaps in one of my dahlia raised beds. I am planning to overwinter those tubers in that bed so I thought it would be easier to plant to fill in gaps when I can see where the existing gaps are now in the raised bed.

Latest garden slacker discovery: pre sprouting ranuncula corms works when done the same style that I sprout seeds (wet paper towel and zip loc)….after soaking the corms I realized I was out of potting soil and knew there was no chance of me going shopping any time soon so tested this method out. I must say much cleaner, less space, and similar results so far as sprouting in seed starting mix or soil.

Norm Williams was a prolific breeder of poms. That statement is only half true as he introduced his first one in about 1937 and last one in about 1988. Yes, lots of poms but it took over 50 years. Persistence counts.

We should continue going for some more tall poms. HH Snowdrop grows 7 feet tall and it would be good one to cross with some well formed very small poms. Margaret dislikes poms because they are not waterlilies. Will she do some hand crossing of poms next year? The old saying is "When pigs fly."

Teddahlia Ted, have you grown Winkie Lambrusco? It's definitely on the large side for pompons in bloom size but also in plant size. Last year mine were 4.5-5' tall and that is with tight spacing plus my plants never grow as large as they do in the PNW. It also makes seeds pretty easily for a pompon.