General Dahlia Chat - 2025

Juliarugula · 2025-01-01T13:30:33+00:00

Justafewdahlias whew! Much better thanks! 😅

SteveM

MissyWeitzel What's the worst season you ever had and what did you do to try to salvage it?

About 5 years ago we had a prolonged heat wave and the soil got so hot that it baked the tubers (almost literally).By the time I noticed the plants in decline it was too late to save the tubers/roots from turning to mush. The heat killed over 90% of the plants and the gophers ate the remaining 10% so I lost all of my 2000+ plants that year. Digging tubers was an easy/fast job that year. Luckily, I had mother plants under shade in my greenhouse so I was able to replace my stock for the next year.

My father irrigated dahlias with overhead sprinklers and when he had extremely hot days he would turn the sprinklers on a few times during the afternoon. I didn't take mental notes but I think he watered for a short time each time and I don't think the ground got really soaked. Just enough to cool things down. If you have sprinklers you might try it on part of your field.

MissyWeitzel

Thank you, Ted and Steve. I'm looking forward to getting to the part of the season where all the beautiful flowers make it worth it!
Lo-Star

Flowernut

MissyWeitzel I'm so sorry, Missy. The same year that Steve was talking about also was my worst season. It was so hot that the tubers just baked in the ground and the plants literally fried. I never had a whole season of beautiful dahlias. When the heat hit my area (southern CA) and it remained hot overnight, most of the dahlias quit growing. They never totally recovered. Then 4 1/2 years ago when I moved (Northern CO), I have had so much better success. It cools off overnight, giving the dahlias time to recover. I don't have the long season, but at least it is pretty good the whole time.

MissyWeitzel

Flowernut yes, the cool nights are the best! It got down to 57 last night for the first time in a long time and then rained (0.05" lol) and was overcast for several hours and my remaining plants were happy about it. 😊

Teddahlia

Gophers spotted in our dahlias. Gopher trapper here today and says there are 4 or 5 of them. So far very little damage and two or three of them are not even in the dahlia garden. He was successful year before last and we had not gophers last year.

NCDahlia

Got a foot of rain the other day from some tropical storm not great for the dahlias. Flooded the area they are planted in. Has slowly been drying out after i dug several pathways for the water to move away.

It has never been this bad with rain. Except maybe hurricane Fran in 1996. Flooded 6 of my bees - mind you they are on double cinder blocks (16 inches) plus the bottom board another 8 inch so water was over the ditch bank by 3 feet.

I will see how many dahlias start the dreaded wilt since the pots are sunk in the ground and its just pure water saturation. Might be another disaster year but hopefully not I am often surprised how resilient they can be. Weather wise not great its been super hot / humid then this flash flood.

Flowernut

NCDahlia I will keep my fingers crossed that they fully recover.🤞

Teddahlia

Gopher update: traps got two gophers the first day. I want the one that has the really big mounds of dirt to bite the dust but he made it through the first day. He did eat one plant and has a predilection for waterlily dahlias. That is pretty easy to do as there are over 600 waterlily plants.
I tried to fool Margaret today and was unsuccessful. A lady at the club meeting gave me two waterlily flowers to show to Margaret. They were only 2.5 inches in diameter and had excellent form. I thought they were seedlings but the lady corrected me and said they were flowers taken from the HH Daydream pot tubers. They cupped really well and had the classic color of Daydream. I walked in the door and Margaret says "Those are really pretty small Daydream flowers" . I was going to say something like these are seedlings of HH XXX( the parent of HH Daydream). I did not have time to say it and she burst my bubble.

blown_dry

[unknown] That's some serious water. 🙁

NCDahlia

Raining again. Lol I checked the rain gauges already another 4 inches. And just got this alert lol. Dahlias might be toast this year. Will update whenever it dries out!

Teddahlia

Daydream grown as pot tuber. Amazing how it looks the same at half the size.

calico20hill

Teddahlia I may collapse with joy at the above picture...hydrangeas and dahlias that match so beautifully!

MA_Dahlias

Hi All! Here in CT we have had SO much rain this spring and top that off with clay soil, my poor plants have been wet. Many of them seem to have yellowing on the edges of their leaves - is it possible this is from all the rain? I have been feeding them with a something like an agrothrive fertilizer and gave them all a doze of Osmocote when they were planted, but they just aren't looking super happy! Any ideas!?

Bessie

MA_Dahlias perhaps this is "salt burn"? The concentration of "salts" from fertilizer combined with shallow watering that does not allow excess ions to move out of the soil can cause this. Since you have had lots of rain, perhaps there was an excess of fertilizer applied or that the Osmocote released too quickly with all the moisture?

Teddahlia

In the PNW more than an inch of rain one day in July, August, or September would be an unexpected flood. In fact, an inch of rain during the entire month of July would be a very wet July. So, I have no clue how to mitigate your flooded dahlias.
Seedling that we need to either sell or enter in trial gardens. Yes, it grows 7 feet tall.

Teddahlia

Small plants, small amount of fertilizer. The amount in the hole is just a starter dose and when they get nearly a foot tall they get another dose of fertilizer. Another mistake people make is adding the compost in the spring. It holds water. Compost is best added months before planting as it is not fully digested and finishes after you add it to the soil. And over the, years, I have seen many, many posts that when they switched to raised beds that drain well , their problems with torrential rains were solved or substantially better.

Juliarugula

[unknown] dahlias.
Seedling that we need to either sell or enter in trial gardens. Yes, it grows 7 feet tall.

Whoa! That is one dramatic waterlily! Is this photo pretty true to color?

Teddahlia

Here is picture as it came out of my cell phone. I cropped it and removed my hand from the bottom of the picture. Yes, it does look exactly like this when conditions are good. As with all dahlias , things change in different weather.

blown_dry

Teddahlia What an amazing, velvety color!

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