Dahlia XXXL

No rush. Frost will blacken the foliage, dig up after that. Its only prolonged wet & cold that will be bad for them (many people leave them in all winter and just cross their fingers) so even after frost has blackened the foliage I don't rush - some time during December normally does fine for me, I get to it in November if we have frosts and if I have time!

 

I'm having to cut my "Bishops Children" down now FC because I need the space to plant wallflowers and put in my free 12 Apricot Tulips( thumbs up courtesy of an astute GC member)and a few little daffodils.
Jenny

 

Have you got room for an extended window box ? Would look nice in those - if they are miniature daffs?

 

Just stop you mowing that bit of grass in spring

 

FC, I have 300 to 400 daffodil bulbs on the edge my lawn, they finish blooming by the end of March, but I can't mow that area until the end of June when they've died back. I'm just pointing out it will look scruffy until then.

 

That's a difficult one to answer. I wouldn't plant them too close together as they need space to reproduce and they do that fairly quickly. I planted the original 300 along the edge of my drive turning the corner and across the front of my house. The strip was about 3ft wide deepening at the corner and the over all length must be approx. 75ft. I planted the bulbs in groups of four and five but spacing the groups out.

I'll leave you to work out the maths on that FC. I have a photo that I took the year after planting and I don't think it will re-produce well if I scan it.

 

I plant daffodils amongst deciduous shrubs but also divide into several clumps after floweriing and pot up. I then "plant" my pots where the gaps are in spring. I find this keeps them rejuvenated too. They are good to edge the veg garden, where veg is not grown. I have a large Acer flamingo I cut down every year and have daffodils planted around the base. When the Acer starts to grow the daffodil foliage is dying down. I do this with cotinus and around deciduous grasses.

 

Assuming XXXXL stands for extra, extra, extra, extra large, I am showing the tubers that I lifted today. They are from Dahlia imperialis and excelsa, both of which can grow to over 30 feet in their native Mexico.


This is the first time that I have lifted them - so I didn't know what to expect. On the left is D. imperialis. Its quite unlike any other Dahlia that I know. Its a mass of thick roots - very thick in places, with very little sign of traditional tubers. The milk bottle was added to the picture to show the scale. I had to use a saw to cut the stems - they were far too large to fit in the jaws of secateurs.

On the right is D. excelsa, which is more traditional and manly. The connection between the tubers and the main stem is a minimum of one inch in diameter - rather more than for most Dahlias.

 

PeterS, how big did these dahlias get? How do they compare with normal dahlias? Where did you get them?

 

Hi Verdun. These can be seriously massive. Apparently the hollow stems of Dahlia imperialis are sometimes used as drainpipes in Mexico. My imperialis was hardly more than 8 feet high this year. But I would hope for more in a warmer year as it puts on a lot of its growth as late as October and November.

I bought both from http://www.hillhousenursery.com/ . D. imperialis flowers very late and needs heat and would be unlikely to flower outside for me. At Hill House, in Devon, they have one outside that sometimes flowers, and one inside their greenhouse that regularly flowers in about November at around 18 feet.

The D. excelsa also came from there. I don't think it gets as big in this country but flowers earlier. Mine was flowering today when I cut it down. However its much more brittle, which makes it more difficult to grow. But I only bought them as tiny plants earlier this year - so I am still learning.

In principle they are the same as any other Dahlia, but they have the ability to grow far larger. I have read of tubers 4 feet long. Also the foliage and shape, just by itself, of imperialis is lovely.

PS D. imperialis can be found under tender/exotics on the Hill House site.