Did I say stout?

The bad news first. The first heavy rain in mid October brought my "stout" Kalista Angels crashing to the ground too heaqvy with water to hold themselves up. The good news is that they were the only statistic; I had tied every one else up.

Side note: the house is full of K. Angel bouquets, from the mandatory harvest.

These are Tioga Dawn, Korb Impeccable Dream, Allie White and Kalista Angel

Note: The Colorado Classic plant is quite weak and tall stems will fall over and break at ground level unless tied up.

Kalista Angel on the other hand is a dense stout bush which could easily be used as a 2'to 3' hedge. The flowers are often hidden within the dense foliage.

All plants have recovered from my accidental poisoning with Round Up (big oops). Anyway, most are looking healthy and are beginning the fall bloom.

minutiae continued

As I was reporting...

Allie White (2 plants) about 2'6" to 3'--same deformity (foliage looks burned)

Clifton Lela (4 plants) All about 1 ' with same deformity

Clifton Zack (1 plant) 6"--same deformity

Aitara Diadem (2 plants) 6"to 16" with same deformity

Korb Impeccable Dream (3 plants) 1'6" to 2'6" with same deformity

Kalista Angel (4 plants) 6" to 12" same deformity

Sorbet (4 plants) 6"to 12" same deformity

Thoughts:

1. I lost 2 Aitara Diadem of the 4 planted. Of the 30 remaining plants 26 show burned, deformed foliage. I can only assume that even though I was extremely careful, there must have been a small amount of drift from the Round Up weed killer I used on the weeds around the dahlias. I heard they were sensitive, but hey don't open a bottle of the stuff within a 1/2 mile of a dahlia! I'll have to use cloth or mulch for weed control next year.
2. I pinched the center growth bud of each plant at 2 to 3 leaf sets. I may have set back the growth on a number of the plants by doing this. Still learning...

By mid August of 2010...

Please skip to the next blog unless you're really interested in dahlia minutiae:



Tioga Dawn (4 plants):

• 1 is setting buds--height about 2'6"


• 3 are small--6"to 8"

Normandy Wild Willie (1 plant):

• setting buds about 16"--new foliage looks burned

Colorado Classic (2 plants):

• 1 is 18"--deformed growth around setting buds


• 1 is about 8" same deformity

Ruby Viola (3 plants)--6"to 8" same deformity

Allie White

The summer solstice (June 21) became planting day for my newly purchased tubers from Clack's Dahlia's.

Ginger bailed me out; she had just planted her tubers a few days prior to this--planting late in the season because of the extremely cold spring weather.

dashed hopes

Late fall 2009, I hosed off the tuber clumps, sun dryed them and by that evening had them in the mud room grouped by variety (original 18 tubers were composed of 8 different varieties) so I had 18 tuber clumps piled into 8 varietal groups. Each clump had 7 to 12 tubers; by the time I had finished dividing them, there were nearly 200 tubers from my first harvest. Snowberry Farm Dahlias was under way.

Late January 2010, I sorted out the few soft tubers, misted and repacked the rest in peatmoss and stored them in plastic drawers marked by variety.

In late March, many had rooted, none showed buds. Suspicion grew as the tubers didn't. Yet, faithfully, on the 15th of May--a few days after the approved planting time, Mother's day--I planted 1-2 tubers per hole with 4 staked holes per variety-- 32 holes in all.

The 2009-2010 winter was the coldest ever recorded in western Oregon; delay was to be expected. But, by June 10, I could wait no more. I dug up several tubers--all deader than door nails. I looked at my Dahlia rows neatly staked out. I was the queen of Hearts inspecting 32 marked graves where I had with great care buried 50 some headless corpses.

Back in November, I had divided the tubers from the clumps and apparently from their "eyes". Beheaded in such a way, by the spring, they had sprouted ghostly roots in the throws of tubermortis.

I'd planted 1/3 of the tubers I'd harvested. Out of all the remaining tubers, I found 2 Allie Whites with growth stems. TWO.

Snowberry Farm Dahlias was off and running (albiet, headless).

In the beginning...

Last spring 2009, I bought 18 Dahlia tubers from Ginger Clack of Clack's Dahlia Patch. By the end of last summer I had 18 beautiful flowering dahlia plants. In late fall I dug up nearly 200 tubers.