I wrote this brief summary of our Dahlia Talk Zoom meeting for our PDS newsletter. By the way, the Portland Dahlia Society is the largest dahlia club in the ADS and now has 502 members.
Dahlia Talk 09-26-23 by Ted J. Kennedy
This short summary does not endeavor to add most of the detail covered in the two hour session and I encourage people to participate and ask a few questions. There were 33 people participating and only one from Australia although Warren Vigor was also present and was visiting somewhere in the USA.
The subjects discussed on Dahlia Talk are very related to the time of the year. There were several subjects covered. Ripening and harvesting dahlia seed pods seemed to be a hot topic. One of the first questions was should you remove the water from the ripening seed pod by squeezing it from the bottom to the top. Some people call this “milking” the seed pod. I gave my opinion that one should only do it during periods of heavy rain as the plant may need some of the nutrients in that liquid during drier weather. We discussed how to determine ripeness of seeds and methods to ripen them indoors. Lots of discussion on frost and how that impacts seeds.
Lots of discussion about seed parents and which varieties make seeds. I recommended Odyssey for miniature balls and miniature formal decoratives. We have won 3 medals with flowers with Odyssey genes. We made some other suggestions and I reminded people that most really nice dahlias do not make seeds or very few seeds. AC Jeri has been a seed parent for some lucky growers of giants. Lots more discussion on this topic. Suggestion was made to be a “successor” breeder and use varieties that were bred by one deceased breeder(when they are still alive, they may not be enthusiastic about it). Warren Vigor commented that breeding like to like is the “mantra” (my words) of dahlia breeding. It only makes sense that when you cross a collarette with a giant semi cactus dahlia you may get a confused mess. Perhaps crossing a collarette with another collarette makes more sense. We talked about Dr Keith Hammett and his belief that breeders should have goals. We all knew that didn't we? We discussed how do we evaluate new seedlings and there is too much detail for this article. We also discussed a statement from the ADS Breeders you tube panel that was shown just before Dahlia Talk and I did not catch it. They stated that if you want to breed a whole bunch of different colored dahlias that you can cross two white dahlias and by some miracle most of the flowers will be various colors They did not say why this happens and I explained to the Dahlia Talk people why this is so. Too much detail for this article.
I talked about the two seedlings at Clack's Dahlias, a seedling of Spartacus and the show winning red anenome bred by Ember(Ginger's daughter)” . We talked about their pedigrees.
We spent considerable time talking about shredded foam used to stage our entries. It is no longer available and we talked about the results of various people using other things to stage dahlias for shows. We almost came up with a consensus that oasis blocks that cost about $1.00 each are probably the best solution. Clubs in the Midwest and East provide free oasis for the entries but is was pointed out that they also provide the show containers that the club keeps. Dan Baulig is going to present this issue to the PDS board.
We also take the time to tell some of the dahlia stories from the past. A discussion of the measurement of the biggest flower in the show was followed by discussion about Gordie Leroux bringing a 17 inch diameter Emory Paul flower to a show and how he grew it so big. Lots if detail was added as Teresa Bergman heard the tale directly from , Mrs. Leroux. The way it was transported to the show was a new detail I had not heard before.
There were lots more things discussed at the Zoom meeting and I encourage you all to participate at the next session.
