Age of seedlings: Dahlias sometimes but certainly not always need a year or two to grow consistently. A second year seedling in our experience will be consistent as far as the flowers about 90% of the time. Differences between first and second year plants are many times things that were in the first year plant but not observed or ignored. So, as far as flowers, you will know how good it is the second year. However, disease resistance takes another year or two to be evaluated. Some dahlias just plain decline heath wise in the third year(or second year too) . Some conservative breeders wait until the 5th or 6th year to introduce a flower. Note: People are sometimes eager to name a flower after someone. Be sure it is a good one before you do so. If you name flowers not after someone and you have a special name perhaps wait also. One old time breeder named them when they were first year flowers but he was incredibly clever about good names and did not use people names. He said he could not remember numbers and could remember names. We are the opposite and some flowers are still numbers many years later but never got released. One of our is named 11-104.
old seedling
