Dahlias - Summer's End/Storage 2014

Many sprout now but hold off growing until spring arrives.

Now I get to plant the JI's that arrived in April/May and have been potted, sitting in water, just waiting for a spot. Then come the bearded irises, crocuses, etc. I'll return to the dahlias if I have time.

Okay. Have fun. I am off to plant garlic and set up some flats for winter sowing of columbine, poppies, babies' breath, nasturtiums, etc. Some of the seeds will go into pots and kept inside all winter then set out late in spring. Others will go out immediately. I will hand plant the poppy babies next year rather than broadcasting. that way I can preen the entire garden and not worry about preening seeds I would like to grow.

See you later

I hope you do better with garlic than my many tries. I've given up. All I get are very tiny cloves so it's not worth the work to me even though it's quick and easy.

I don't use Preen where I'll have poppies. I'm just too afraid of lingering effects. So I get the miserable tradescantia year after year. I should quit poppies for one year to kill that rotten plant.

The irises remain unplanted. I prefer to work in sun and missed my chance so now I'm in the midst of cleaning the fireplace gardens, using Preen, then mulching.

Isn't tradescantia a pretty little plant. I have tried to grow it here but no success. Did you leave the paper on each clove when you planted it. that was what they said to do at the workshop. Plant 2-4" deep, make sure the paper is in tact (or it will rot) and only plant large cloves. I guess we will see next year if 1) they survive, 2) they grow, and 3) they are of a size to make it worth the space in my raised bed.

I cut up the tubers I dug and they look pretty good. Better than last year in terms of being firm and healthy. Now if I can just pick the right method to store them. I will dust them with a fungicide although that didn't seem to stop them from rotting in the past.

I think Dan said he just puts them in ziplocs with some vermiculite (or perlite). wonder if it makes a difference? And I still have two more Rebecca's World, and one more each of T.Swift and Iceberg so I should have a good shot at getting tubers that survive from them.

Maybe I can make a trade back to Dan; Rebecca's World for a LaLuna as I lost all of mine.

I hate it. Be glad you haven't been successful. For me it's a weed and I treat it as such.

Yes, I did. My garlic didn't rot but it just produced heads that were really too small to use unless I smashed an entire head to put in my stock pot.

Oh, no! I know how much you loved LaLuna. Why do we always lose our favorites?

I did take cuttings of Kasasagi, Bodacious and a few other favorites so I'll have to be very diligent in keeping them over the winter.

I love tradescantia! It's so pretty, what's not to like about it?

I'm with Pirl on the trandescantia! Takes over! It's a thug here. Plus when it starts to age a little it looks messy. I won't have it in my garden again!!

Joyce and I think alike. It is a thug and gets so messy looking. I'll continue to watch for any pieces and destroy them as I did for months this year but once I stopped checking daily the thug returned.

When I was a new gardener I loved any plant but that ended when I saw how aggressive some plants became.

Lol....maybe I'll be in that boat some day. Where I have my tradescantia planted though, it must contend with Sweet Woodruff, physostegia, and japanese anemones. It has it's work cut out for it in the spreading department.

It's a matter of taste and choice and we're all allowed to choose what we want to grow...and hope the thugs don't take over.

That's for sure. It's fun to pit thugs against each other though.

Might be "fun" at this time in your life but may not be the same fun when time is shorter and you want the garden to show at its best. Many (if not most) of us have done similar things. Just save your back and your sanity and don't ever plant Houttuynia cordata 'Chameleon'.

https://allthingsplants.com/plants/view/77066/Houttuynia-Houttuynia-cordata-Chameleon/

Lol...yeah I've heard about that one a couple times cruising the forums. I am a fan of the 'messy' cottage look and appreciate a plant that spreads to fill in all areas. Now the only drawback to that is actually accessing parts inside the garden where you can't get to from the outside. That's only really a problem for me in one bed though.

I also have read about it. Wasn't it you (Arlene) who dug up a bunch of daylilies then covered the area with black poly in an attempt to kill that stuff off. You had daylilies in pots every where.

Still do! Have to get to plant them one of these days!

Good grief. That was, what?, a couple of years ago. Well, obviously daylilies like pots. I may have to try that also. I am really into placing pots around the garden as fillers while keeping the weeds down with the cardboard and chips. I simply cannot keep ahead of the weeds any other way. And it appeals to my OCD to have some order and crispness to the appearance of the gardens.

Yes indeed! Good grief. I began potting them up 8/30/2010. I lost a few that were in small pots but all the big pots remained fine, growing, blooming. They can stay outside here in pots all year long as hostas can. I don't move the pots because they are much too heavy.

Cardboard and chips will go a very long way towards helping reduce the weeds.

Here is the Fubuki tuber you sent; well in its resurrected state. lol Just look at the eyes. Including one way up on the stem. I cut it up and have several tubers that I hope will winter well. I am off to get peat moss to break up to store the tubers in. Hope it is the right guess.

Just so you know, since there are other dahlias with the Fubuki name, that one is Fubuki Red and White. It's been a delight to grow.

There are so many eyes that I wouldn't know where to start.

Are you going to try dry peat moss or slightly damp? I've heard of people doing it both ways.

I went to Lowe's but they didn't have any peat moss except in little bags. It would cost a fortune. I thought I could try the saran again I guess. Have to do something soon with the ones I have cut up before they start to shrivel. But want them dry enough not to rot. Or I could just use vermiculite. I will have to decide tomorrow. I am in the 18 treatment cycle of radiation now so my after noon are cut up with that appointment. Feel okay though. Not really a big deal once they got set up.

Yes, I remember you said it was Fubuki Red and White. Too long to put on a name tag. lol. And it is the only one I have. I have to get the others dug tomorrow as the ground is freezing fast and it makes it difficult to be delicate in extracting the tubers without breaking some of the really good ones.

Good luck with the treatments. I can see how it would break up your afternoons.

Call it FRW - it works for me.

Breakage is bad so I guess you'll just have to grin and do it.

Well there is nothing like high winds and nickel and golf ball sized hail to make a mess of a Dahlia bed, and flowers in general. We had some wild weather last night and today I went out to inspect the carnage, I must admit it wasn't s bad as I expected but there was quite a bit of damage. A lot of flower heads and stems snapped off. On the bright side, I now have a lovely bouquet on my table. :)

Good for you making lemonade from lemons!

The Dan's Alpen Pearl was huge so I added another stake a few days ago. The wind and rain last night still pulled it over. It would have snapped without the additional support.

This is how it was Oct. 5th before the winds but also before I added the other stake. Next year a few will have double stakes.

I always hate to cut them for a bouquet, this time Mother Nature did it for me ;) So I couldn't let them go to waste, now could I? lol I see some extra stakes in my future, too.

I just put them on the bricks, took a photo, then brought them inside.

Staking and tying to the stakes does take a lot of time!

Beautiful blooms pirl!

Yes, for sure. Your dahlia bushes are huge. Mine get tall sometimes but never as big around. And I pinch the center stem early on to try to promote bushiness rather than height. What is the flower to the left of Alpen Pearl?

Thanks, Nanny.

I also pinch and I remove the bottom 2' of leaves but they still get huge.

That one is an older Akita, Mary. Here's another shot of it.

I have admired Akita for some time. Do the stems on your dahlias stay the same throughout blooming. It seems that some the stems on my dahlias become thinner and thinner hardly, if at all, supporting the flowers. It was particularly bad in the kidney bed where I had a bunch planted about 12 to 16" apart. I suspect I should have fertilized more. They really sucked the poor bed dry. The worst were those around the north rim next to the bricks. So they were hemmed in by the brick rim on one side and a depth of two rows of dahlias on the other. They were smaller ones like Blue Bell and Red Hat (small plants and average blooms.)

I'll check the Akita stems today. When I was working with the dahlias I did notice some stems are like steel while others are too wimpy. I'll take notes. Somehow I think too many branches being allowed to flower depletes the strength of all stems. Next September I'll add "de-branching" to my dahlia chores. Jamaica, Dan's Alpen Pearl, Kasasagi, Vancouver - all flop due to the huge width of them. Mingus Toni has been tied up three times, staked twice, and still leans too much. I'll attach a photo.

There is an article somewhere on the web (maybe Lynch Creek) about too much fertilizer not being good for dahlias.

I just looked couldn't find anything about fertilizing too much but found many sites saying to keep increasing fertilizer. I won't change anything I do. I have enough gardens to care for and can't devote even more time to adding fertilizer since I already have more blooms than can be believed.

Found it and it was on Lynch Creek! Here it is:

"Back to aphids: those tiny soft-bodied fliers, are sucking insects (functionally as well as descriptively) that prey especially on the tender greenery of new growth. This is one reason that Andy and the crew at Lynch Creek Farm (whose dahlias are thriving, by the way) advise against heavy fertilizing of dahlias during their growing season."

Andy is the owner and a very nice guy. I can't fathom how he could be nicer!

Here's the entire page about aphids from Lynch Creek Dahlias blogs:
http://blog.lynchcreekdahlias.com/2011/07/bud-and-some-bugs-on-my-dahlia.html

Well, I guess that answers that. I had tons of booms so maybe that was it. Too much into the flower and not enough for the plant. I'll 'run over' and take a look at Lynch Creek. Thanks.

Processing tubers now. Looks like WWI trench warfare in the garage what with all the clumps and dirt. I am afraid that some of the crowns froze. I will process them anyway just in case I am wrong.

After reading, I am off to find peat moss....

This message was edited Oct 9, 2014 9:57 AM

I found it interesting because other sites went on forever with feeding the plants initially, then when in bud, when opening, etc. I just don't have that kind of time or enthusiasm I guess.

I did take notes of which plants need 2 to 3 stakes and the heights. On the stem issue I noticed some have weak stems and the same exact plants have many blooms with strong stems - it's convincing me to remove more branches next year. Akita is one that had both weak and strong stems.

I am about 2/3 through cutting and setting up to dry. I have to admit a thought keeps trickling through my mind as I see what little I get from the tubers, that I may abandon this entire process next year. Just buy enough to have a nice presentation and let them freeze come fall. Could just be how I am feeling today. Not so hot. It is just rinsing off and looking at each clump, some really large, then ending up with so little in the way of tubers. And many/most are long and thin rather than plump. I wonder if it is our daylight/ambient temps that cause that. I know I have lots of plants each spring. I just question the amount of work involved. Perhaps just cutting back on how many I have would resolve that. Ya think??? :)

Yes!

I feel that way often enough and especially at digging time so you are not alone feeling that way. Put a price tag on your own work and the amount of hours spent and you'll probably come out ahead or even if you bought new ones each spring.

You could order some and then wait for the good dahlia sales in May. You are tempting me.

Today I was at Lowe's and spotted the Milky Spore product and then came home and did the math. For me to just treat our property it would be $432. plus tax. Then I'd have to convince my neighbors, many with much larger properties, to do theirs. Then I'd have to tell them they have to do it every year to protect my flowers. The chance of that happening is less than that of having Santa come down the chimney.

I agree. I wonder if that would work on my Siberian Pea Hedge. it gets grey stuff on it and the leaves start falling off around July or so. It is such a nice little hedge around our front deck for privacy from the cul de sac. The deck faces west so in the evening it is nice to sit there on the swing. I will see if I can find it at our Lowe's.

I would be concerned that if I bought dahlias in May I would have no flowers. Our season ends, as you can see, much before yours. If I start my plants in doors around the middle of March, then I have flowers by late June or early July. I don't mind paying for the dahlias. I would just keep them reasonable and maybe even shop Lowe's or Home Depot. I have 70 plants and that is just too many to deal with. A few multiples. I guess I could just dig up my favorites and let the rest go. But it would be hard to choose.

I've never even heard of Siberian Pea Hedge so I can't help with that.

You're right and I hadn't even thought of that. I don't know if you like the "collections" some places sell. I feel they always have a few I wouldn't want under any conditions so I may as well order what I love.

Having 70 IS a lot of plants. Trying to decide the keepers is rough. I try to do it but instead fool myself into thinking of neighbors who might want to give them a try but they'd be sprawled on the ground since I'm sure they wouldn't stake or tie them.

I will absolutely pare it down next year. lol. She says having 10 more new ones coming. Maybe I will luck out and suffer huge attrition this winter. I cannot imagine the work Dan goes through with over 100 plants. But he (and you also) have such a wonderful variety of blooms.

It's a lot of work and seems to take longer as I grow older.

My plans were to put the ones I wasn't crazy about on the outside of the garden but now that they're being nibbled on, I guess I won't. I can give them to one couple here in Southold that loves anything.