Greetings and need help ID'ing this dahlia

Hello everyone I just joined the forum today and was reading through this section since dahlias are my current obsession. A little bit of a background on me and then to my intended post. Around the beginning of May when my wife and I were shopping at a local Fred Meyer when we happened on a display of various bulbs and tubers which were half price. On a whim I decided to snatch up about $42 worth of them which saved me about another $42. I bought a few bags of begonia & dahlia tubers. The dahlia varieties I ended up with on that day were Arabian Nights, Motto, Mystery Day, and Sunshine. It was a nice variety and I ended up ripping up a bit of my overgrown yard to plant the tubers and they sprouted within a week. Well needless to say I got hooked quite quickly and now I'm overly obsessive with the gardening I've currently got cabin fever while the winter seems to waste away time I could be growing flowers with.

Anyways, one of the bags of tubers I purchased was labeled "Motto" with a nice picture of some dahlias. What ended up up sprouting was sometime completely different the plant reached about the maximum height of 6ft. with nice 5-8 inch blooms. I've looked at some catalogs of different types and the closest I could identify this as was "Color Spectacle" and even the pictures vary quite a bit depending on where you look.

Look forward to discussing things with you more. I've got plenty of questions and things to share as well.

Since I already said some of the dahlias I grew I'll just list off some of the others.

I also grew
Swan's Sunset
A La Mode - My neighbor stomped the plant when it was still pretty small when he was mowing the lawn and didn't even notice. I tried to grow it again from the beginning of July and right when it was about to bloom the killing frost swooped in and ruined it.
Pooh (accidentally over-watered it and it exploded in the ground)
Hawaii
A pink cactus dahlia I think it's name may have been "Star's Favorite" or something like that.
I bought a few bags of tubers that were supposed to be orange dahlias for my wedding and they ended up being yellow with
pink edges. They look alright but nothing too spectacular for my taste. Here's a picture of them, maybe someone can identify this as well.

Welcome to DG and the Dahlia Forum edewitt ^_^ I don't know what your luvly dahlias are but someone will have some suggestions. It's a little slow here in the time of the cold and the dark but things pick up with the Wakening of the Dahlia Festival which I celebrate end of March/early April. Others a little later depending on where they live and whether they start them in pots or in the ground.

Thanks, dahlianut. I'm not even really too concerned with the identifying of the dahlias I just wanted to mainly say "hi". I'm just biding my time at the moment. Got a 225 light LED grow light delivered today and I'm going to test it out on some mini gerbera daisy seeds I have. I'll post a picture of my little test area below. If they do well I'm going to get a few more lights for my indoor rack setup. Hopefully they'll do well without a heat mat for now.

So far I've ordered a few dahlia tubers some I've already gotten and some I won't get until next March or so for this next year.

I'm excited I ordered
-Sir Alfred Ramsey
-Shogun
-Isadora
-Lucky Number
-Osirium
-Heat Wave
-Kelvin Floodlight
-Akita
-Grand Prix
-Candlelight
-English Breakfast
-Rae Ann's Teacher

I've got quite a few more I plan on purchasing. I'm going for a crazy amount of variety. Time to tear more of my yard out.

Dear Edewitt, I too, have cabin fever and a new obsession with dahlia's. One reallly different and cool one I tried last year was "Giraffe". Can't remember were I got it but if you use the plant search tool you will find it. I am buying lots of seeds this time of year. Dahlias are very easy to grow from seed if you can find the varieties you want. Also check out the winter sowing forum-it gives us gardeners something to do in the winter and it really works! That Dahlia you posted sure is pretty-let us know if you i.d it. Thanks for your post and happy holidays! Gardencat
p.s. Do you use compost and/or aged manure on your dahlias? I hear conflicting advice on this practice and am wondering since mine were shorter than expected last year.

Thanks for the post, gardencat4. Actually I didn't use compost or aged manure, I just threw the tubers in the ground and just let them go aside from weeding and watering and later in the season I had to grab some stakes because they really wanted to start leaning. I think I learned more about dahlia care after the season was over than during the growing season, heh. I'm trying to grow a little Black Beauty dahlia bush indoors from seed at the moment. Right now the little guy is still a sprout but growing pretty quickly. I'll post a picture of him and the other dahlias I had grown this year.

Here's my "Sunshine" dahlia. I harvested quite a few seeds from these plants. Nice dark foliage.

My "Arabian Night" dahlias were the first to bloom.

I think this one may have been named "Star's Favorite". The picture on the package did not do it any justice.

Here's my "Mystery Day" dahlia.

"Swan's Sunset" I got this one in mid-June it didn't get to bloom for long or grow any tubers which was a shame.

Unfortunately the ones not pictured above are the
"A La Mode" - stomped by neighbor and then second plant was killed by frost right before it finally bloomed.
"Hawaii" - Both got some sort of fungus on them because the soil was too loose and I transplanted one to a pot where the plant kind of suffocated and the flower came out very odd looking and I moved the other tuber to my backyard where it didn't get much sun and bloomed in early November.
"Pooh" - Tuber got over-watered and after a few weeks of no sprouts I dug it up to find it had split open and was a mushy mess.

Dear Edewitt, thanks for the pics-I particularly love "Sunshine"-really nice color, form, anddark foliage from what I can see. My growing season here isn't as long as those in the Pacific Northwest and as a result my dahlia's often die of frost before they really hit their stride but I have been working on ways to get them started earlier and have been getting some nice bloom. Your little Black Beauty sprout looks so happy-I think I'm going to go start some seeds even though it's really too early for most things in my zone. I am trying Iris versicolor (oops, going off the Dahlia topic) which needs to be cold stratified for three months. I am also going to search for "Sunshine" tubers-thanks again for the beautiful pics. Happy New Year.

Well if you run into trouble finding the Sunshine tubers let me know. I harvested seeds from them although they may end up being a cross between Sunshine and any of the other dahlias I had. You could start them indoors and by the time it would tuber planting time you could put the seedling into the ground. Maybe you'd have some sort of spectacular dahlia that you could name after me (hehe). I've been reading up on starting early with tubers and cutting sprouts off of them and putting those in styrofoam cups with a starter soil and a rooting hormone put where you removed the sprout from the tuber and getting quite a few plants from one tuber. I'm going to give them as gifts because I've gotten quite a few friends that I would have never imagined into gardening, dahlias in particular.

Thanks Edewitt-I may take you up on that offer and yes, anything spectacular I would name after you. I have a boatload of perennial seeds. I should have something that you may be interested in. I don't have much at all in the way of tubers right now-I guess I left some outside too long and we had a very rainy fall so they went mushy, including the interesting Giraffe I had mentioned. The tuber of one of my favorite dahlias, which resembles Sunshine sprouted while in storage. If it happens again I will try that propogation method you mention of rooting the sprouts. Dahlias are incredibly prolific-it's great that they are so outrageously beautiful and the tubers multiply, plus give us seeds and we can take cuttings! Gotta love them. It's great that you are spreading the gardening love to your friends-did you warn them that it's highly addictive? I would rather have new plants than jewelry.

I found a couple of other pictures for the dahlia I originally posted about. It's a great looking dahlia, but definitely not any good for a cut flower.

The other shot.

Sorry, but this post made me laugh because I had the same problem last year and posted here to try to help ID my NOID. You say not a good cut flower-is that because the stems were short, mine were same (short, I mean). About 3"-4". I had some this pink in the beginning, but got a tad more lavender as summer went on. I decided, whether accurate or not, it was Lavender Perfection. Lol. What do you think?

Carrie

Here's another shot...Not fully open (curly-q in middle so cute!)

P.S. If I were The Amazing Poochella, I would have linked my original post, but let's be honest- I'm too lazy right now. Maybe later haha.

Here's guardians' version...
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/251101/

Not lazy Carrie, just not enough coffee. I've had half a pot already and can now link to the entire universe of dahlias LOL!

You can easily groom your dahlias to get longer stems. Start by disbudding, giving just the main bud the chance to develop. You can also remove the first set of lateral nubs at a leaf set below that bud which will give you additional stem length as the plant grows. All it takes is a good fingernail and a quick scrape as you walk by. If you just want to enjoy more dahlias on the plant you don't need to fuss with this, but it's really easy and pays off for pleasing cut flowers on longer stems. Just snip off the leaves when you go to cut the flower and bada bing: longer stems.

I don't know what edewitt's pinker NOID is or your lavender version. I think Lavender Perfection and Lilac Time are two of the most commonly mislabeled/interchanged dahlias found in big box stores or big garden sellers that don't focus on dahlias alone. I bought two packs of "Lilac Time" last year and got what I think is "Lavender Perfection" instead. I don't know which is which anymore.
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/270256/

Thanks for the instructions there, Poochella. I may try that this year. The reason I say it isn't much of a cut flower aside from the short stems is that the petals wilt quit quickly once you cut them. There's a very soft and velvety feel to the petals.

Yup. Aside from the collarettes, you need a fully double bloom to really hold up to cutting. But you can enjoy them in the garden easily enough, and longer too.

Did you put your bloom in water right away when cut? Hot water is even better.

I like the 'velvety' factor a lot, especially in bright colors.