dahlias – Page 2 – gaias-gift.com

2011 Dahlia Gallery

[oqeygallery id=18]Here are some of my nicest photos of this year’s dahlias and the dahlia bed.

Small, compact dahlias dominated this year, starting with Art Deco, (saved from 2010) which graces the deck boxes in back. The different colors that you see in the pictures are real; there’s even more variation of golds and rusts along with purplish pink tones than my camera can catch. Dahlia Esther was also a surprise. The online catalogue showed a rather flat orange and this is much nicer. It started early; it’s had the most blossoms of any variety and it’s still going strong. You will see it dominating the dahlia bed in most of the bed pictures. Ellen Houston is a small, solid, deep red dahlia, (deeper red than the camera can handle) with dark stems and shiney dark leaves. It should have been in front of the bed and next year it will go there. It may need some staking, or just more sun.

Two small ball dahlias come next in the sequence. Kasasagi echos the colors of Esther but with a different shape. Little Scotty completes the color transition to a pure yellow. I love their perfectly shaped, minature petals but both of these have minimal impact from a distance. Littly Scotty is a tall plant that needs staking. I think he will go on the back row between some larger-blossomed dahlias next year.

The smaller varieties are also earlier than the large ones, which just started showing off. I’ll be adding to this part of the collection next year for sure. This part of the gallery starts with Croyden Masterpiece. These are not as large as some that I grew a few years ago; those got me hooked and then, tragically, died. These start much pinker than I remember. Then they go lovely shades of peachy orange. Huge, yellow Bilbao was saved from one that I grew last year and planted directly into the ground as a trial. Worked pretty well! I like Ryn Fou best when it develops that deep purple stripe.

Moving the daylillies

I bought maybe one plant of a deep red daylilly at a public garden that I visited in New York State many years ago. It was in the bed along the front walk before I planted the roses and I may have split it once long ago. Due to the horizontal supports for the climbers, it ended up under the roses. After this year’s flowers were spent, I decided to move it. It had become quite a clump and I was able to divide it into seven fans without even trying. I decided to pull the non-performing amaranths and from the before and after pictures, you may agree that pulling them wasn’t a sacrifice. I was able to preserve the single perfoming specimens of amaranth “Cinco de Mayo” and “Early Splendor” (from left to right). My plan for this long border is for the display to move forward through the seasons, from the once blooming roses to daylillies and then to the dahlia bed in front. Maybe the amaranths to fill; we’ll see.

Early dahlias

It’s still too early for my full season dahlia gallery. The dinnerplate dahlias are tight buds, but starting to show color. I’m enjoying the flowers too much though, not to share. Croyden Masterpiece is not as large as it should be and not really orange, but I love it’s complex coloring. And it shows well with amaranths Love Lies Bleeding and Cinco de Mayo.

I have a nice design element happening (I never actually saw any of these before, just picked them out of a catalogue) which is the color and shape transitions from “Esther” the flat collerette to “Kasasagi”, to “Little Scotty”, the shy yellow ball (He still has a lot of leaf to flower ratio but it’s still early). Next year I will know that Ellen Houston stays shorter and goes in front. It picks up the red in the yellow/red blends.

Esther, Kazasagi (top), Little Scotty (front right) — Esther, Kazasagi, Little Scotty

The third shot shows the cheerful effect.

I may be crazy

About dahlias. After so many failures, with only a few successes, I often think that I should just give up on dahlias. Excuses abound. Our climate just isn’t right, it’s too hard to pull and store the tubers. But then, every day I drive by the Weston Racquet Club with a really exceptional display of dahlias. I stopped in to ask permission to photograph last year and I was told that one of the landscapers just likes dahlias. I’ll say. And, to put this in context, I look and look for public gardens with displays of dahlias this time of year and they are almost impossible to find in New England.

I just don’t know how any gardener worth her stuff can look at these flamboyent displays of color and light energy and not lust to grow them.[oqeygallery id=17]

Mulch

July is when I realized that I was insane. Or at least that my decision to keep up with the weeds in the rose bed without mulching must have been made in a moment of insanity. My father told me that roses did better with bare soil but now I remember that he said that when he was fully retired and could tend to his roses (and the weeds) every day.

To mulch or not to mulch is a serious question. Here in the North, mulch has a number of negatives, especially the typical bark or wood chips that are so widely used. These mulches can:

Raise the acidity levels, and most New England soils tend to be a bit too acidic already.
Tie up nutrients as they decompose, at least right where they touch the soil.
Keep soil cool, and I’m always running around in the spring with a soil thermometer, willing the soil to heat up! Heat up!
Prevent repeated applications of composts, manure and other soil amendments, throughout the season.
Bring their own fungal diseases or weed seeds.
Create considerable expense.

So why mulch, I asked? And with that long list, you might also. Well, here’s my story from this summer, with the plants I raise.

Tomatoes: I don’t have enough space to rotate, and that’s fallen out of favor as people learn more about micro-organisms that live in the soil and have a symbiotic relationshp with specific plants. However, other diseases overwinter in the soil and get transferred to the plants when water splashes them onto the leaves, so mulch can minimize that. See my post on Mainely Mulch. I was very disappointed that it wasn’t free of crop seeds as advertised, but the truth is that even the heirloom varieties that are vulnerable to soil borne diseases are looking good for late July.
Dahlias: I’m a novice with these. Told not to put them into the ground until the soil warmed, I planted them out in a new bed with soil purchased from a local farmer and thought that the sun warming bare soil would be a good thing. But when I asked some questions about plants that were wilting and failing to thrive, See pictures in Dahlia Problems. I was told that it was probably verticillium or fusarium wilt, the same soil borne problems that tomatos have! Further, because of questions from a gardening freind in Arizona, I learned that dahlias have shallow root systems that don’t like too much heat. Southerners who want to try to grow them should apply a thick layer of mulch to keep the soil cool. It’s all relative, I guess. But I can report that after a thick layer of mulch in July, all of the plants in the dahlia bed, even the healthy ones, perked up and started growing faster. (No, it didn’t save the plants that were already sick.)
Hydrangeas: This spring, I planted a couple of small “Let’s Dance Moonlight” hydrangeas (picture above) that I’ve been growing in pots into a bed that’s not realy finished. I wanted to continue to reshape the area and add amendments and other plantings before I mulched. The hydrangeas were doing very well except that they would wilt badly in the heat of mid-summer sun. I was wondering if I had to sacrifice their lovely blossoms for this season, to let them develop deeper root systems. But first I thought I’d try mulching them. Since this section of my post is talking about why I do mulch, you know what happened; they thrived.
Roses: Yes, personally, I’m sad to say that I can’t keep up with the weeds without mulch. Even with mulch, I have to weed. Lots of vining or plants with runners (strawberries, e.g.) don’t need bare soil to settle in. And mulch should never be applied right against the stem of a plant, which creates opportunities for weeds. Especially with roses; they do much better if there is plenty of air circulation around the bud union. That means no mulch but also, no weeds.

So I hope this has offered some advice that you can adapt to your own plantings. I do have a regular feeding schedule of balanced, slow release fertilizers for roses and other mulched plants to compensate for the little bit of nutrients that may be tied up in the decomposition process of the mulch. And I amend the soil in flower beds to lower their acidity every spring and fall. I’m trying to get competent with a soil test kit to make that more accurate. If you understand the needs of your plants and compensate for the down side, mulch can:

Help with weed control
Keep soil borne diseases from spreading to new plants
Moderate soil temperatures

Canna at Applefield Farm

I have every intention of writing a more complete blog article about Applefield Farm in Stow, MA, one of my favorite, maybe THE favorite, of my 117 commute. However, within the last weeks, I’ve had a couple of different conversations about their use of Canna in container arrangements. A picture being worth many of the words in those conversations, I snapped a few shots on my way home from work. Call this a “lick and a promise” as far as telling you about the farm market goes.

If you don’t know Canna, they are the tall plants with the banana-shaped leaves. The flowers come in an incredible array of colors as do the leaves. As you can see in these pictures, they make a very nice height component in a container and the effects last all season if you choose a variety for its leaves. One of my favorites is “Bengal Tiger” (not shown here) but it’s day-glow orange flowers and chartreuse striped leaves don’t go with everything. One of the nice things about this farm market is that you can buy the plants and combine them yourself, or they will create a beautiful container for you.[oqeygallery id=15]

Why I love dahlias

This is Art Deco, from the Gallery series. It’s a small plant that I grew in my deck boxes last year and again this year. It’s very happy at my house, compared to other dahlias that I’ve tried, and just starting what I hope will be a long blossoming season. The color is hard to describe and changes in different lights. But it goes well with just about anything. I like it with blues and yellows.

Dahlia problems

I have problems with two of my transplanted dahlias. One is wilting for no apparent reason and another has very curly leaves. I’ve read a lot of web sites and they are so scary; easy to think that all of mine have one symptom or another. Wilting, and I’m supposed to look for rot at the root of the stem, there is none. And curling leaves mean aphids they say. I see no other evidence of aphids and being a rose person, I do know aphids.

I SO want to be a dahlia person. Any suggestions?

I am also updating my June photo gallery post to include a budding “Art Deco” dahlia, among other shots.

Dahlia bed

I did mention how I’m never really finished, right? The dahlias are in their new bed. It doesn’t work as well from a design standpoint as I would like; it needs to be bigger in order to echo the shape of the bed behind it. And built up higher, which would be better for the dahlias as it would drain faster than the surrounding heavy soil, too. Ultimately, I want it to look like it’s all the same bed. But I need some way to get into it and work it, so I decided a narrow strip that I mow was most efficient.

But it was near 90 degrees and felt much hotter in the full sun that dahlias love on the day that I finished it, I am not a dahlia and can’t handle that kind of heat. I just wanted to get them in the ground and find some shade. The good news is that dahlias are treated like annuals and I get another chance next year to make improvements.

Now the choice is whether to mulch or not. The bed behind will be mulched, I’m just letting the amaranths acclimate. Most of them also got planted this weekend.

This whole area is designed to bloom from back to front. The peonies are blossoming today and the rose buds are getting fat.[oqeygallery id=10]

Difference in Dahlia Tubers

I don’t know that it means anything in terms of performance but I’m wondering again this year about the differences in how dahlia tubers are prepared for sale. Swan Island Dahlias came to me the way that I expect, one tuber with a sprouting point on a small part of top stem. Brent and Becky’s came with clumps of tubers for every dahlia purchased.

From left to right:

My tubers (you can see the yellow from the sulfer that I used as a fungicide last winter)
Swan Island tubers, every tuber has the name stamped on it, and
Brent and Beckys, these were sprouting in the shipping mix to the point where I didn’t want to disturb the roots by cleaning the tubers. Other varieties from them did not have as much sprouting or hair roots but were still clumps of tubers.

: Dahlia tubers

(Click on the image for a larger picture.)

Parc Floral, Orleans France

[wpvideo tO4B4taw]I found this park on one of my first visits to France. My early research had advised me that the Loire Valley was the place to visit for garden interest. Although it doesn’t have the history of Monet’s Garden or Villandry, what it does have is this well-loved feeling and such a variety of beautiful plants and special-purpose gardens that it’s always worth a visit. Ironically, the rose garden, a semi-ampitheatre around a large reflecting pond, was one of the best I’d ever seen on my first trip — no camera. By the time I started recording my journeys they decided that drainage was an issue there and were reworking that area to improve it.

Orleans is a short distance from Paris and it makes a great starting or return point for a car-based visit to greater France. The Mecure near the center of Orleans is a favorite of mine, especially when I’m ready for the air conditioned, large room hotel experience. I’d spent a week in Saumur at what was supposed to be an exclusive and historic B & B. The new owner stuck me in a badly furnished attick room up three flights of stairs (because a bus was coming (no bus came)), wouldn’t let me use the pool (problems with the permit and could use it but it could destroy his business), and wouldn’t let me into my room between 11:00 am and 4:00 pm (everybody knows that’s how it’s done). It was near 100 deg F most days and the attic didn’t cool down well at night. I gave up, and to my host’s great displeasure moved to the Mecure for the last few days and sunk into the luxury of air conditioning and dinner by the pool.

Peace Garden, Caen France

[oqeygallery id=1]These are pictures from the Peace Garden, it’s associated with the War Memorial in Caen. There were not good directions to the gardens itself, but if you drive around the block where the Memorial is located, you will find it. There is parking specifically for the garden.

I love the architecture of the rose garden and remember when I first visited. I came over a hill and saw this fantastic theatre in the round open out before me, full of roses. Breathtaking. These pictures are from two visits, one in the spring, where the rose pictures were taken and one in the fall. There is a really nice area that features dahlias and the blooms go well into October Notice the picture of the rose hips in the fall set. That rose is “Wedding Day”, and I would like to find a source for it in the US.

Learning Curve and dahlias

I love the dahlia gardens that I’ve visited in France but I haven’t mastered the art of growing them well. This was my second summer trying and I have some questions for more experienced people. People who actually grow them year after year. Question 1. Is this bad genes or something that I did wrong?

I also had a lot of these (nice!)

I’m trying to save the tubers, just to get the experience; will I want to use them?

Category: dahlias