Dahlias

I plant my Dahlias out at the end of May as well .

 

Hey @Beckie76 don't fret over the dahlias from seed too much, mine have been in around 2 weeks and only now got second true leaves emerging, they'll soon shoot up My bedding dahlia seeds haven't germinated, just cactus think my seed was out of date. Last year, think I started them end of Feb (too early) had to put them out end of April and bring them in if we had frost

I've started some tubers off and was wondering the same @JackJJW do we need to pull the shoots off and let it have a main one last year I left them too it, this year 2 tubers are really going for it!

@Billybell any ideas why one from seed wouldn't produce any buds? It was a fair sized plant, lovely and healthy looking..even pulled some bits off to encourage it. I've kept the tubers for this year to see if anything comes of it anyways

 

Not planting mine out yet, just putting the pots outside - bear in mind I'm in centralish London with a microclimate where our night temps are at 6C right now. Keeping them in the house is so warm that the shoots are up to 5" before they have leaves. So it's an experiment really. I've only put a few out so far, the ones with the biggest shoots.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Interesting. Most of my tubers have multiple shoots now. Some have 5.

 

Me too. I haven't started all of them, no room atm. A few shoots been broken off accidently, son keeps putting his diggers in the soil.. just with all of the tubers I bought and grown from seed last year, there really was only one main shoot now I have loads I'm wondering if I should have split the tubers.. always next year!

 

All I can think of is that when you say you pulled some bits off, you might have removed the growing tip where the buds would have formed. Sorry I cant be of more help.

 

No worries It was towards the end of summer when I already tried giving it more Sun, repotting and feeding it more..Just hope it was worth keeping I'll find out soon enough

 

Let's experiment - we could both try one tuber with just one shoot and let the others grow free!

I was recommended earlier in this thread to aim for 3 - 4 shoots on the larger Dahlias I think.

 

Oh lets! Should be very interesting. I planned to take notes on the difference in varieties, this should be fun too. Going to pot the rest up on the weekend

 

Great! I have two Hillcrest Royals. I will let one go crazy, and I'll restrict the other one to a single stem although will let it grow multi stemmed from that, and see what happens.

 

It can take a while for them to wake up Woo....sometimes more then 4 weeks, are there any roots growing on the ones that are non sprouting ?

 

I normally give them a gentle tug and feel if there is any resistance....also most of mine until
last weekend were sitting in seed trays to take cuttings from, so its a bit easier for me to see if they have taken root, they are now in pots but even with the care I take with the tubers some never make it :(

How long have they been in the pots Woo? it might be that they simply need longer to
wake up, are these in your greenhouse? On mine, the 4 or 5 that I have left outside over the
winter period don't have shoots yet.

 

Don't panic yet @wiseowl You are obviously like me and get impatient! If you carefully pull back the compost you should be able to see wee bumps close to where last seasons stems were. These are the growing points which will sprout like the ones you already have. As long as the corms were firm and not soft and gooooey when you planted them they all should spring into life. Once they sprout the growth is usually very quick if you have them in a warm place. Because it's been so cold here and it's due to get worse I only got my massive corms out of "hibernation" yesterday. Soaked then for about 10 hours and they are now heeled in in the greenhouse border. With loads of sunshine which we have atm, my corms will start back into growth within the next 2 weeks and hopefully won't be too far on before I can plant them out.