I'm still dividing and getting ready to start waking up tubers for cuttings. Also debating whether or not to divide out my first year seedlings that I saved, or just plant them as clumps.. especially considering I'm sure I'll throw out a good handful of them on their second year. Do you have a specific practice @Teddahlia ?
General Dahlia Chat - 2025
- Edited
",,,,,,,,whether or not to divide out my first year seedlings that I saved, or just plant them as clumps.. ,,"
The first thing we do at digging time is to dig and divide the first year seedlings. We are dahlia breeders first and the most important thing to us is the first year seedlings and there is only one of each when they are clumps. The best of the second year seedlings almost all have multiple plants. They are dug after first year seedlings. So we dig and divide the first year plants and I always divide even a very small clump into two parts so that if one dies the other still exists. Yes, second year seedlings are heavily culled but the best of the second year seedlings have multiple plants and that gives you a year head start on multiplying stock. We always take some cuttings of the best of the first year clumps(confusing as they are second year now). Our best first year seedling made several tubers this year and we will probably grow about 15 plants of it next year. The "run of the mill" first year seedlings often turn out to be the best ones (you cannot be sure when evaluating first year plants) and they end up being almost a year behind in tuber production. Many of our best introductions were not identified as "best" the first year.
2006 seedling
- Edited
In what might be called "Random", I came across this fascinating info, after going down a rabbit hole looking for something totally unrelated....
Research from the Oregon Health and Science University and the University of Portland has found a compound in dahlia blooms that may develop into a treatment for neurodegenerative diseases like MS.
The chemical found in yellow and orange dahlias is called Sulfuretin. It is an anti-inflammatory flavonoid that has also been identified to have possible therapeutic properties in treating rheumatoid arthritis.
Credit for the quote above is from Instagram.
University of Portland? That is my alma mater. This news was published in the Oregonian newspaper and we all knew dahlias were good for something .
Eating yellow dahlias will be the 2025 rage! This year I am only going to plant yellow dahlias.
magucci I took a workshop with her & there was a link to the database tool but I could never figure out how to access it & just gave up. (I should probably have contacted her) I have been making a picture of the tubers when they arrive & notes about the seller like great packaging, healthy all sprouted, extra bonus tuber included... or.... no neck, no eye, shriveled etc. because there are sellers i would like to avoid now because of blind tubers, no response, snotty attitudes etc . I would like to have a page in a database where I could put those notes. I wonder if I could add that to Idylwides or this etsy sellers spreadsheet? & is google sheets easy to use? my husband thinks it's a clunky program. Everything now is just handwritten notes on paper & I have no idea where it is 
LoriDee I find google sheets really easy, but I’ve never found spreadsheets to be difficult. Sometimes I have to google to figure out how to do what I want with it.
DarcyD this is amazing to see!! Haha I’ve been hiding mine in my back yard so my neighbors don’t think I’m quite so crazy 
the hoards of seedling starts and cuttings of things in random plastic yogert containers, reused pots, and tofu containers will be starting before I know it, so trying to keep my yard looking a bit less chaotic for the time being
I saw a video on “breaking the rules of winter sowing” and someone said they would “pot up “ their winter sowing seedlings to protect them/let them a bit grow bigger before planting out and I thought that was a great idea. I plan to try this year. “Pot up” as in moving them from a smaller salad clamshell into 2 milk jugs or something of the sort
calico20hill Yes distilled water ones are great and much cleaner then milk jugs! I will have to find out if someone I know uses a cpap, since in my area I’m striking out with the milk jugs. Getting milk delivered from Smith bros, dairy free milk only, and only buying cardboard pints from Trader Joe’s is basically one of the 3 responses from everyone I have asked
Teddahlia It’s only my second season taking dahlia cuttings so I will be rolling the dice /taking notes on how fast or slow some sprout. That’s a good point also about time from first cutting till time to take second cutting. That makes me think of how this summer I had a dahlia that had its first blooms ready 8/15 then I swear there was nothing else that was ready to cut for over a month and a half! Where all my other plants once the bloomed there seemed to be a much faster turnaround time. We too have a half bath that is the coldest place in the summer and warmest in the winter. There is a lot of bulb/corm storage that happens in there, haha I keep half the cupboards locked so no one finds a basket of tulip bulbs while looking for some hand towels!
You should be able to add a new table onto it with the fields u want ( for example image, seller name, buy again or not buy again, notes about order , ect) or if you would rather it would be fairly straightforward to create one from scratch. The video link posted before is extremely helpful in figuring out how it works.
My kids go through three gallons of milk a week so I should be ready to winter sow next week. 
I did buy meal prep containers for starting lisianthus like I've seen on social media.
I read a discussion between @Teddahlia and @SteveM on spur leaves being a fault in judging.... but now I can't find the discussion 
to properly place this post.
Yesterday I viewed YouTube videos from the Dahlia Society of Ohio... which included many videos of how to judge blooms ( Thanks for the recommendation @Teddahlia to learn more about judging). I learned the current thoughts on how to judge a spur leaf on an entry, and the teaching is they are not automatically a fault.
The experts were Senior Judges Ron Miner and Tony Evangelista who presented a slide deck of examples with the discussion. Online Judging - 3rd Video - 2023
Here are a few excerpts with timestamps from the transcript (note that there are multiple spelling issues with the voice recognition):
23:51
and this shows two examples of that uh if you have a Spur Leaf without a
23:59
crooked stem that's just fine but if if that causes or is associated with a bend in the stem
24:06
then that is a fault here's an example where they're not
24:13
.....
34:12
okay now that out of the spur Leaf uh at one point in time I think back far
34:19
enough a stir Leaf out used to be always a negative but that's that's not true
34:25
and shouldn't be true because if you have a long stem and you have a Spur
34:30
leash coming out the back of a long stem it can help to break that up and
34:36
actually inherit enhance the appearance of the of the bloom
34:43
[Music] particularly standing back it will enhance
34:49
because it's big and ugly and off to the side or sticking straight out front and
34:55
then it's a fault for sure uh okay this is uh again a crotchy bloom
...
1:04:07
okay should you remove the spur leaf for judging
1:04:17
me no in general I think they end up that
1:04:22
positive as opposed to a net negative and that because if it's if you take it
1:04:28
off uh most judges will see that it has been
1:04:33
removed and then you kind of need to imagine it as ugly enough to uh to have needed to be
1:04:42
taken off what about people and paper trick Tony
1:04:47
talk that's that's that Tony is the only guy I know who can handle that
1:04:53
with scalpels and sandpaper I I think there's the weather to take them off or not strictly depends on whether if the
1:05:01
stems needs that spurly for balance depending on the next you know your true
1:05:06
pair of leaves that's underneath it and the length of the stem you have to leave if the spur Leaf is touching the bloom
1:05:13
it has to come off because that's really distracting and if it's too low to the the first pair of
1:05:19
leaves it has to come off but if it's in the middle and it looks balanced you
1:05:25
know you could leave it if it's in the back and your stem is long and you curl it up it actually drives your eye to the
1:05:31
stem so that that is the answer to that question is it depends you know I I would and
- Edited
Spur leaves: There is a genetic trait in dahlias that causes the flower to have a solid stem instead of a hollow one , fewer rows of florets, extreme plant height and lastly, numerous spur leaves on the stem. The flowers are generally waterlily in form and Rawhide is one with the trait although there are many old time varieties that had this genetic trait.
I considered using the trait for breeding and Aaron Ridling's Wicked Witch was given to us. I believe it grew 12 feet tall in his garden but only 10 feet in ours. I decided that using it for breeding was not advisable.
The issue of spur leaves on a stem has only come up once or twice in my decades of judging. My theory is that wise exhibitors shave them off and say a bug bit the stem if asked. The times one or two were still there , the entry generally got a blue ribbon but no higher awards. I believe if the spur leaf is small and does not detract from the outline of the entry, it is not a negative.
I believe that the prejudice against spur leaves may be related to the genetic trait above and generally the flowers are not even close to show quality.
Bessie I haven't judged for about 40 years, so I imagine things have changed since then. Back then, spur leaves were considered a serious fault and so were perfectly-paired leaves with insect/disease damage. I believe judging has become more forgiving with both of these "faults".
Of course, a spur leaf is not a disadvantage (or fault) for a cut dahlia. In fact, the set of genetically linked traits that Ted mentions is desirable and I have seen it in many great commercial cut varieties (e.g. Gingersnap, Candy Cane, etc.) The genetic "spur" gene is not always linked to the "shallow WL", "solid stems", or "tall plant" genes, but most often is. Hollyhill Tiger Rose is an example of an exception and she is a very nice, full WL, with spur leaves. If breeding for commercial cut dahlias I would not hesitate to use a genetic donor with a spur leaf (or several). I wouldn't want that trait if I were breeding for show dahlias because of the "shallow" trait that seems to be genetically linked (in most cases).
Even if a spur leaf is carefully removed from a show entry, its fate is doomed. The result is often a bloom sitting atop an unnaturally long, barren stem, with the required leaf pair at the bottom of the stem., rendering it noncompetitive.
bloomhjelm if the Apricot Lemonade cosmos don't wow you, next year try the Apricotta. In my garden it was way more vigorous, pretty, and longer lasting when cut. I am a huge cosmos fan and I think it has become my favorite. Here's a pic I took of it with Kelsey Aria. 
".......rendering it noncompetitive." If the judge sees the scar, the flower may only get blue ribbon if it is really nice otherwise. One spur leaf probably ruins a blooms chance for a higher award. Multiple spur leaves are the equivalent of disqualification. Breeders need to be aware that they are a negative.