2025 Seedlings

Bessie · 2025-04-01T16:33:09+00:00

This year, 2025, has been challenging to get healthy Dahlia seedlings! Still trying to figure out the many ways I've gone wrong. I dumped about 30-40 seedlin...

Teddahlia

Emilyp How long soak in bleach solution?

Teddahlia

Sprouting seeds. Here is HH Cotton Candy as a "baby" way back when. We have not sold it much in recent years but occasionally, we will have extra tubers.

KitCMC

Teddahlia that must have been an exciting trip to the seedling patch!

Justafewdahlias

Do you bottom water your dahlia seedlings? I understand the rationale yet I find myself making a mess whenever I bottom water. I also am a bit impatient waiting for the soil to be just right….or I will get distracted and next thing you know the soil is soaked. If your dahlia seedlings are in 4inch pots to start or potted up into 4 inch pots are you still bottom watering? Or does it stop at the 4 inch pots? Since I haven’t really done bottom watering with many plants I don’t know if this keeps going for the 4 inch pots or if after that generally people stop?

Teddahlia

"...or potted up into 4 inch pots are you still bottom watering?" Bottom watering is not something we do. Plants here are watered with very weak solution of water and greenhouse fertilizer. We shop at a huge plant nursery(10 acres of greenhouses) and they have tables set up for bottom watering. The set up must be at least 20 years old and still working. They pump water loaded with fertilizer and sulfuric acid into a maze of pipes that loads the water onto the hundreds of tables that have special mats on them. They grow some of the best plants in the area.
Sulfuric acid? Yes, the well water is slightly alkaline and they correct the pH by using sulfuric acid pumped out of a 55 gallon drum. I would never even dream of using it.

The water is in pipes and tubes everywhere and each basket gets the special water though a tube. They also use beneficial insects to to control the bad insects. Some of the baskets have the small paper packet that holds them or more probably held them. I used a couple in our greenhouse and have no idea if they worked or not as we do not generally have insects in there anyway.

MissyWeitzel

I was at my local grow shop today. It's geared toward indoor cannabis growers, but have all sorts of things dahlia growers can't find without ordering online.
Anyway, I was talking about beneficial nematodes with the employee and he said a lot of his customers use them for fungus gnats in their indoor grow rooms. There are multiple variations of beneficial nematodes and for fungus gnats it's 'SF'. That sounds like a really great option for dahlia growers with cuttings and seedlings inside or in a greenhouse I haven't heard mentioned before. Has anyone here used them for that indoors?

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