Dahlias: Close to the last hurrah, 1 by drdon

drdon wrote:
hiya Poochella,

nice to see you.

In the gardens here, if you're not man, woman, plant, dog, horse enough to handle this heat (btw six weeks of temps over 100+). We, the doggies, the horsies, and the gardens got our collective tooshies kicked this year. The only gardens that thrived in the weather were the cactus collection and the salvia collection. For a few weeks I thought the dahlias were just going to lay down and say ENOUGH! They just layed down. Temps down into the 80s for about a week now and they've perked right up. We mulch so heavy that their root systems stay pretty cool and we mix them up with other stuff so they get some protection from above (except for BAW).

Dahlia (the doggie) is a PeeBeeGeeVee or a Petite Bassett Griffon Vendeen. She looks like a mix of a Bassett Hound and Benji...lol.

BAW is a real favorite of ours and this year we should be able to share a few tubers. We also have a BA-Yellow that didn't take the heat and went entirely vegetative during the heat. It probably won't do much for the rest of the season. It produced some monster flowers in the late spring, but summer was a tad harsh. I'm considering moving it to a little more protected area during dormancy.

Dahlias for us are a purely aesthetic gardening endeavor. I feel a little puny not knowing the names of my hybrids so I give them nicknames instead.......no patent infringement intended...lol. But as the name of the doggie shows, we do love them dearly and hope to do more species dahlias in the years to come. I will be making root cuttings of D. imperialis and D. exelsa this winter to see about sharing a few with true lovers of the flowers. I'm excited to see doss' tree dahlia, her foliage earlier this year looked like the plant had tapped into Pizarro's fountain of health. But then again doss just grows really good stuff. My tree dahlias drop a few lower leaves this time of year and the heat exacerbated the leaf drop. Yet they are at least two feet taller than last year and are starting to push a ton of growth out of axils which is the telltale sign they are setting up for bloom. You must tell us about the 15 footer you heard about.

best to you, and thank you for sharing so many inspirational dahlia pics.
don