Dahlia Questions

Voyagerxp

I planted my first ever Dahlia's this year but they were too tall for the boarder i put them in.  Well next year i'm building a big boarder in my back garden but won't be ready for the start of next year to replant. Can i store dahlia tubers or do they have to be replanted every year?.

Also 2 kinds of dahlia's i planted this year had 1 or 2 flowers that didn't look like the other flowers, does this happen.

Dahlia Sagitta

Odd Dahlia Sagitta flower

Dahlia Perfect Match

Odd Dahlia Perfect Match

Obelixx

As long as you keep dead-heading, dahlias will keep flowering till the first frosts blacken their leaves.  Then you can dig up the tubers from below soil level, cut off all the stems and foliage laving just a couple of inches of stalk and turn them upside down in a frost free place to drain for a couple of days.   This helps reduce rotting over winter.  Then you turn them the right way up and store in wooden boxes or create wrapped in newspaper or packed in straw and keep them in a cool, dark, frost free place for winter.

Next spring, bring them out in to the warmth and light and plant in trays till shoots form.   If you like, you can take cuttings at this point to increase your stock.  The parent plants can then be potted on until it's safe to plant them out after all frosts in May.

This way you'll have time to make your new border to plant them out next year and, if it's well drained and not too exposed to cold and wet and you can mulch them, you can try leaving some dahlias in the ground in future years but take cuttings as insurance and keep young plants sheltered till their roots are strong.

Lyn

I bought some like your first photo, it was called Crazy Love, maybe you muddled the labels or it had been mislabelled in the shop.  You wouldn’t get the pale pink and the red from the same named plant. 

Voyagerxp

Mine are these

fidgetbones

Out of all the dahlias I have grown this year, the only one that looks like the packet illustration are Kiev and my Love both all white.   All of the coloured ones are a different shade to that shown on the packet. Peachy seem more orange. Pale pink seems more purply pink.  One of the white ones has pink bits in.  I blame the heat.

Lyn

I can understand that the shades vary from the packets,  they’ve all been through Photoshop before selling, but I wonder how they can name the pink one and the red one the same.