General Dahlia Chat 2023

blown_dry · 2023-02-04T23:41:17+00:00

Continuing from https://cubits.org/Dahlias/thread/view/91587/?offset=560#end_of_thread

calico20hill

CHecking out my "blue" seedling,Salish Hiro's Welcome against this ...

Bessie

calico20hill I really like the form, as well as the color, of the blue/ purple dahlia! I live in a relatively mild climate, so if you need to export a tuber for safe keeping, I'll pull out all my tricks to preserve the genetic material. I already have ideas how to successfully deal with the long skinny tubers. 😀

Krista

calico20hill Wow what a beautiful color! I do hope this makes it to production, I’d be thrilled to grow this blue’ty in my garden. 💙

Teddahlia

I believe the professor that did the GMO blue dahlia retired and took the specimen with him. He said something like "it is too hot to grow dahlias here and I keep the plant in a friend's greenhouse. " This reminds me of the millions of dollars a company spent to get blue roses. The resulting product was panned for not being blue enough. Carnations are one of the better GM success stories as you can buy purple carnations just about every where. Noni: your flower wins the blue prize!(but to most of us it is more purple than blue, still a whopping success)

calico20hill

I do enjoy it in my own garden and think it is at least as blue as Bluetiful from Swan Island. I do know that Bluetiful was not one of the seed parents as I did not have it the year.I collected this seed.

Juliarugula

calico20hill that is very blue! What a beautiful shade!

I really love it - do you foresee releasing it to the public some day?

calico20hill

Juliarugula I think it is in the box I am sending to Triple Wren to try out. I have to check that box before sending as i packed it in Nov and we have had one cold spell after another where it was unsafe to send it either here or there up near the CAnadian Border. Hiro's Welcome is named for my grandson who was born just a few days before the first bloom. He is a lively 3 yr old now who speaks Japanese almost as well as English. WHich is niteresting becuase his dad is Caucasian and his mama is my (adopted from Korea as an infant) daughter. But our Hiro he is and definitely welcomed! This plant makes long skinny tubers that are a bit tricky to store so we will see, but I love it in my garden. It grows tall.

CollaretteQueen

Teddahlia Too bad I discovered dahlias long after they stopped selling dahlias (Corralitos Gardens). They had several collarette cultivars that made me feel itchy - Ryecroft Sunrise was one of them.

Teddahlia

Collarette dahlias are weeds. Ooops! I must have tourettes syndrome when I type. They can be lovely flowers.

Juliarugula

calico20hill oh good! I hope I see it for sale soon - it’s lovely and so unique. Love the story behind the name also!

SteveM

MissyWeitzel Here is a link to John Menzel's description of the Pulse Watering method he uses:
https://pndcdahlia.com/Bulletins/PulseWateringforDahlias.pdf
It is very interesting and, although the exact method he describes wouldn't work in my situation, I think there are parts of it that look promising and I will try a hybrid method as an experiment..

MissyWeitzel

SteveM awesome, thank you Steve!

Teddahlia

I believe the "secret sauce " for pulse watering is that the goal is to get the water to the plants and not to allow the soil to get wet. The plant roots immediately take up the water leaving none for the soil below. Since it is done quite often during the day, they can stay hydrated. Perhaps a crappy analogy would be taking in your water in a cup or having an IV inserted into you vein. Very crappy analogy.

SteveM

The main advantage of Pulse watering is to keep the moisture and fertilizer in the root zone instead of letting it drip lower, past the root zone. This "advantage" would probably be a disadvantage in my case because much of our water is from the Colorado River and irrigation water can be pretty salty. Without leaching, I would worry the irrigation and fertilizer salts would build up to a harmful level. If I used this method I would have to do a deep watering occasionally.

Teddahlia

When we get a soil test, they test to see if we have enough salinity, not too much.

SteveM

Teddahlia You are lucky, saline irrigation water is a problem here, especially for the avocado trees.

AKWindWatcher

SteveM I'm fascinated by the pulse watering approach. Really not needed so much here from a conservation perspective but, you know me, I like experimenting. I might try it with some this summer.

SteveM

AKWindWatcher For me, watering containers is trickier to keep even moisture so Pulse Watering might be the perfect system for containers. Looking forward to your experiments!

Teddahlia

In an overly warm greenhouse there is a mistake you can easily make concerning watering the tender plants in the really hot weather. The mistake is giving them too much water and just like the pulse watering, you should give the plants a short burst of water several times and AVOID getting the pots very wet. This is not logical. Why would you not keep the soil moist and the plants would survive the hot weather? The answer is root rot. Really hot temps added to really wet soil in pots cause root rot. Once plant has it it generally will die a slow death. It is better to let the plants get wilty than over watering.

MissyWeitzel

If any of you enjoy listening to podcasts, this episode is what sent me down the rabbit hole of pulse watering.

https://notillflowers.libsyn.com/the-power-of-pulse-watering-effective-irrigation-and-better-plant-health-with-emma-horswill-from-earthenry-farm

If you want to go even further into crazy and super interesting topics, also check out the episode on Brix.

https://notillflowers.libsyn.com/the-magical-brix-number-that-stops-pests-an-exciting-conversation-with-dr-tom-dykstra

I saw the owner of microflowerfarm mention brix briefly on IG and ever since then I have been trying to read up as much as I can on the subject. It is easy to find info about brix levels in fruiting plants like grapes, and how that relates to wine making. It is also easy to find information on brix and growing cannabis hydroponically/ indoors. It is not easy to find anything about it regarding field grown flowers. If this is an actual achievable thing, and if this dude isn't full of crap, this would be a magic bullet when it comes to dealing with pests! I ordered a refractometer and I can't wait to try it out this season. My plants will probably be like a 4 on the brix scale. 🤣

Bessie

MissyWeitzel this is my kind of info 😊. Lots to learn about.

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